Author: FLC Admin

Coercively Controlling Fathers Post-Separation: Here’s What The Scientific Research Tells Us. | Dr Emma Katz

One of the most puzzling aspects of coercive control is how society divides the personality of the coercive controller into two parts. As a partner, he is understood to be harmful. But when it comes to his identity as a father, the same is not the case.

The public tend to be naively optimistic about the behavior of coercively controlling fathers because the world hasn’t yet caught up with the results of scientific studies on the subject.

Summarized by Thompson-Walsh and colleagues, they have found that coercively controlling fathers:

“continued to be abusive after separation, were unable to separate their spousal and parental roles, maltreated the children in order to punish the mothers, and used co-parenting contact as a pathway for continued control.”

Tragically, despite the seriousness of coercive control, the world in general still sees it is inevitable, even desirable, for coercively controlling fathers (most of whom will not face prosecution) to continue to spend lots of time with their children, and for the children’s mothers to be forced to share responsibility for their children with these men.

Mothers and children are therefore placed in an appalling situation. If the mother has a supportive family of her own, her family can be painfully stuck in this situation too, unable to pull the mother and her children away from it, and having to watch the harm unfold.

Very few professionals are actually willing to keep these children safe by simply allowing them to live safely and peacefully with their mother after the parents separate.

Rather than keeping children safe, most of these professionals actually help the coercively controlling father who behaves in these ways to have contact with children after the children’s mother separates from him.

Source: Coercively Controlling Fathers Post-Separation: Here’s What The Scientific Research Tells Us.

Caitlin Roper details deepfake cyber terror campaign.| Mamamia

As a feminist activist, Caitlin Roper is no stranger to getting hate comments online. Angry men come with the territory.This time was different.Each time the Perth woman opened her phone, there was a new tirade of abuse waiting for her.Pornography, violent images, threats. Only this time, the woman in the images had her face.It wasn’t Caitlin’s body.They were deepfakes.”They had taken my image from online and used that to create a video that showed me, essentially, fellating a series of penises. And then they also created AI-generated images that showed me being tortured and murdered,” Caitlin told Mamamia.That was only the beginning.

“They undressed me with Grok [X’s AI feature]. They also sent images of weapons like guns and knives to me and then described how they intended to use them on me,” Caitlin said.

Death and rape threats became the norm.

“You f****d with gamers, now we are going to rape you,” one read.

Another: “My bat gonna fit nicely in your skull.”

Caitlin and her colleagues were doxxed — their home addresses and phone numbers shared online.

Someone even put a bounty on their heads, Caitlin said.

The abuse started after Collective Shout, an Australian not-for-profit campaigning against the sexualisation of women and girls, launched a campaign against rape content in the gaming industry.

Collective Shout had demanded payment processors — including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal — pressure Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming store, and smaller game storefront itch.io to pull hundreds of games featuring rape, incest and child abuse-themed content.

Within weeks, it worked. The payment processors began enforcing new content restrictions across gaming store platforms.

By the time it was over, Caitlin said she had endured eight months of constant abuse across all platforms, describing it as an “orchestrated campaign of cyber terror”.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women, Reem Alsalem, went further. She labelled the backlash as “the most serious form of online violence against women human rights defenders” she had seen “in a long time.”

For months, Caitlin operated on high alert.

Each morning, she’d wake up and spend at least an hour reporting, blocking and documenting the abuse. She could never keep up.

“It would continue until I went to bed at night… And it was like that every day for months and months,” she said.

“It’s deeply traumatic,” Caitlin continued.

What struck Caitlin most wasn’t the anonymity; it was the opposite — the number of men who sent threats and abuse from accounts with their real names and faces attached.

Caitlin said police handed her a “cyber safety info sheet” and told her there was little they could do without an offender’s identity. Reporting to the eSafety Commission wasn’t that much easier.

“When you’re facing a volumetric attack, it’s just impossible,” she said.

“Every threat needs so much evidence. You need a screenshot. You need a URL. You need proof that you’ve reported it to the platform. Proof the platform has refused to take it down.”

It’s an “impossible” task when you’re deeply traumatised and in survival mode, Caitlin said — often only to find “nothing will happen anyway.”

Source: Caitlin Roper details deepfake cyber terror campaign.

Exclusive: Government removed ‘sex’ from sex education | The Saturday Paper

As the government announces another review of consent education, The Saturday Paper can reveal that evidence-based discussion of sex was removed from the federal framework in favour of a more politically palatable approach to “respectful relationships”.

Recent events – in particular the two alleged sexual assaults involving teen boys from two private Sydney schools, an alleged sexual assault involving Sydney Swans players, and the death of a 16-year-old girl in Sydney as a result of suspected sexual strangulation – prompted Education Minister Jason Clare to announce that the federal government would review consent and respectful relationships education to ensure its “message is getting through”. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Clare said the federal government would review the current consent education framework to ensure students, parents and teachers had the resources and support they need. 

[T]he recommendation for a “sexual ethics informed approach” to be a “core principle” among the 11 interconnected guiding principles for effective consent and respectful relationships education was removed. Essentially, the framework skipped over explicit discussion of sex and instead focused on “respectful relationships”.

According to several sources, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, the resistance the experts faced in adopting a more “explicit” sexual ethics approach was mirrored in the experience of the Australian Human Rights Commission in developing the questions for the National Consent Survey. The final results are now being tallied by the commission, after a four-year delay, and are due to be released later this year.

[Ed: I can understand the hesitancy trusting the experts advice on providing ‘explicit’ conversations about sexual ethics with our children. It is important but sadly this work may attract all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. There is a fine line between educating and grooming.]

Source: Exclusive: Government removed ‘sex’ from sex education | The Saturday Paper

Premier Ben Carroll vows action on Family Court child abuse cases | news.com.au

Premier Ben Carroll vowed to act “immediately” after a News Corp investigation exposed horrific cases of children being placed into the care of alleged abusers on Family Court orders.

Mr Carroll on Thursday conceded the cases were “incredibly concerning” and promised he would take immediate action involving state and Commonwealth government counterparts to protect kids from further harm.

News Corp revealed a catalogue of cases in which children caught in parental disputers were ordered back into violent or allegedly abusive homes by the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia.

Among the cases was a Victorian boy returned to his father after he was strangled so badly he required hospital treatment, and two kids taken from their mother by AFP officers on the orders of a judge to use force, smash down doors and handcuff the kids, if necessary.

The investigation revealed how the Family Court overrides intervention orders protecting vulnerable children to place them in the homes of parents accused of violence.

Source: Premier Ben Carroll vows action on Family Court child abuse cases | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site for latest headlines

High Court rejects gender appeal, deals blow to Sall Grover | The Australian

The High Court has refused Giggle for Girls app founder Sall Grover special leave to appeal the case brought against her by transwoman Roxanne Tickle, meaning that without new legislation, Australian law is now set in stone: men can become women, and sex is not purely biological.

Ms Grover had been seeking to overturn a finding by the Federal Court that she directly discriminated against Ms Tickle on the basis of her “gender identity” when she barred the transwoman from the female-only networking Giggle app.

However the High Court announced on Thursday that it was refusing special leave to appeal, with costs awarded against Ms Grover.

The court had been expected to accept the case, which raised fundamental questions about the legal rights of women and transgender people.

In a two-sentence explanation of its decision, the High Court said: “There is no reason to doubt the Full Court’s construction of s. 7D (1) and (2) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth). Any appeal dependent on the demonstration of error in the Full Court’s construction of those provisions has insufficient prospects of success to warrant a grant of special leave to appeal.”

Ms Grover told The Australian she was “absolutely devastated” by the decision.

Source: High Court rejects gender appeal, deals blow to Sall Grover | The Australian

Unaccredited Family Court experts influencing child custody cases | Herald Sun

Children are at the mercy of unregulated professionals who play “God” with their safety and future with complete legal immunity in the Family Court, whistleblowers say.

Private family report writers are among the most influential parties in child custody cases, yet they operate without accreditation, are not required to have foundational knowledge about coercive control or systems abuse and are virtually untouchable if they recommend dangerous custody arrangements.

The widespread problem was acknowledged by the federal government more than two years ago when it legislated new powers to enforce mandatory standards for family report writers.

But the untrained ‘experts’ will continue to influence who children live or spend unsupervised time with for years to come, as the accountability reforms have stalled.

Consisting of social workers and psychologists, family report writers are granted witness immunity by the court to enable them to give honest opinions about family dynamics without fear of legal threat.

Critics say this legal fortress creates an accountability vacuum as there is no effective way of holding them to account as they are not bound by enforceable standards and there is no formal accreditation or monitoring process for compliance in place.

Experts say report writers are highly susceptible to being manipulated by charming perpetrators and can reframe genuine safety concerns through the lens of parental alienation.

Private report writers are expensive, costing up to $15,000, paid directly by parents often to avoid delays in court proceedings.

Those who are registered psychologists are technically answerable to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, however it rarely intervenes in Family Court, especially in relation to reports, which are viewed as judicial disputes.

Source: Unaccredited Family Court experts influencing child custody cases | Herald Sun

Urgent call for child safety hubs nationwide to keep kids from danger | Herald Sun

Specialised child safety hubs must be rolled out in every state so critical information can be compiled into a single brief to prevent Family Court judges from placing kids in danger, a leading advocate says.

The intelligence centres would combine police, child safety workers and health professionals under one roof, where a trained forensic interviewer would conduct a single, trauma-informed interview with a child to be used across all courts.

All relevant history – such as hospital visits, police call-outs, child protection concerns and school attendance – would be collated in a unified report handed to Family Court judges to evaluate a child’s safety based on the balance of probabilities.

Victoria already has several multidisciplinary centres which co-locate police and welfare experts but advocates warn these hubs are primarily focused on criminal convictions and do not combine their intelligence into consolidated civil risk reports.

This means judges are blind to critical safety information about at-risk children especially in cases where high evidentiary thresholds force police to abandon criminal prosecutions.

A more radical proposal urged by critics is the complete dismantlement of the Family Court to be replaced with state-based courts which already handles criminal and protection matters.

The survivor-led Family Court Accountability Network (FCAN) said a unified body was necessary to prevent kids from being handed over to abusers.

A landmark 2019 Australian Law Reform Commission report declared state-based courts were the best model to protect kids.

It found that while the majority of Family Court cases involved complex factors like family violence and coercive control, the court has no statutory investigative powers and cannot compel state child protection agencies to investigate.

Source: Urgent call for child safety hubs nationwide to keep kids from danger | Herald Sun

Jasmine Sussex wins appeal in trans lactation vilification case | The Australian

A transgender woman who stimulated lactation and fed her baby the liquid produced has been ordered by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal to provide details of the hormones involved and the composition of the substance.

The overturning on appeal of a previous QCAT ruling represents a win for former Australian Breastfeeding Association counsellor Jasmine Sussex, who is being sued for vilification by Jennifer Adrian Buckley over statements referring to Ms Buckley as a “man pretending to be a woman”, “a child abuser” and someone who adopted a “delusional queer theory take” on breastfeeding.

The decision, handed down late last week by senior QCAT members Ned Aughterson and Samantha Traves, set aside a January ruling by fellow QCAT member Peter Bridgman, finding he had made errors in law constituting a “substantial miscarriage of justice”.

Professor Aughterson and Ms Traves found Mr Bridgman had erred in deeming that the process involved in stimulating lactation in biologically male Ms Buckley, and the nature of the substance fed to the baby, were not relevant to the case.

Ms Buckley has been given a deadline of September 16 to provide particulars of “the ‘induction’ of lactation including whether the induction involved hormonal stimulation and, if so, what hormones, the source thereof and the process and extent by which the levels were decreased or increased; the composition of the substance which was lactated; and the precise source of secretion of the lactated material”.

The judges cited evidence heard in the case from a medical doctor and bioethicist that “no evidence-based protocol to support the process of inducing lactation in a transgender woman (biological male who has transitioned to live as a woman) has yet been published in the academic literature”, and that “no longitudinal research exists regarding whether it is nutritionally adequate nor whether there are any negative outcomes for the child”.

Another expert witness, a registered pediatrician, is cited as having made reference to “the risks associated with taking ­‘secretion-inducing drugs’, including for the infant”.

Source: Jasmine Sussex wins appeal in trans lactation vilification case | The Australian

What Now? With Jonah Wheeler – by Lisa Selin Davis

Source: What Now? With Jonah Wheeler – by Lisa Selin Davis

‘Gisele Pelicot 2.0’ wife who was ‘drugged by husband so other men could rape her’ dies ‘after sexual abuse caused fatal injuries’ | Daily Mail Online

An Austrian woman who was allegedly drugged by her husband so that other men could rape her has died of the injuries she sustained while being sexually abused. 

The disturbing case has been called ‘Pelicot 2.0’ by prosecutors, in reference to Gisele Pelicot, a French woman who was raped by dozens of men on numerous occasions after being drugged by her husband.

On June 25, emergency services were called to the couple’s home in Marchtrenk, Austria, after the 39-year-old woman was found lifeless and covered in blood on a waterbed by her teenage daughter. 

Her husband, who was intoxicated, initially told first responders his wife had an accident during ‘rough sex’, news outlet 20 Minuten reports. 

Police did not initially suspect the 51-year-old husband. However, an autopsy and a search of his phone revealed that the woman’s death was linked to something more sinister. 

Following his wife’s death, police found that the man disposed of the waterbed and deleted an app on his phone.

[Ed: How is it possible that the police did not initially suspect the husband and he was able to dispose of crucial evidence after her death?]

Source: ‘Gisele Pelicot 2.0’ wife who was ‘drugged by husband so other men could rape her’ dies ‘after sexual abuse caused fatal injuries’ | Daily Mail Online