Our experts explain the problems, and the often brutal reality for mothers caught up in a Hague Convention case. They also propose solutions which could help ensure the safety and wellbeing of mothers and children, and lead to a more just outcome.
Source: From Abduction to Protection: ending the injustices of the Hague Convention – Hague Mothers
Femicide is a feature, not a bug, of patriarchy.
In the early years of my work, when women would ask me, “How is this happening when we are the victims of unremitting cruelty? How is it that our abusers are running the show?”, I’d say, “I’m sorry. We’re working on it. It’s a matter of educating police, judges and CAS.”
Back then, I believed my own words. I saw myself as part of a broken system.
I no longer see the system as broken, but working exactly as intended, to maintain control of women.
The truth is, women face massive resistance to leaving abusive men. They are opposed at every turn by the justice system itself, routinely patronized, belittled, accused of overreacting and “having an agenda”. They endure massive character assassination and are routinely abandoned to situations of grave peril. They are prohibited from taking their children—and themselves—to a life of peace and security. Father’s rights supersede even the rights of the women they batter. Ironically, it is often the men who receive society’s sympathy. Even when men kill women, their violence is explained away by stress or mental illness.
We hamstring women, trapping them between a rock and a hard place. Stay and be mistreated, and possibly killed, or leave and live in fear, and possibly be killed. Oh, and by the way, your children may be killed. We hope not, but we can’t be sure. You might want to teach them a code word, or maybe give them a safety plan so they know to run into the bush if the perpetrator shows up. Nathalie Warmerdan’s son Adrian, 15, was in the house when his mother’s killer showed up. He ran into the bush as she had instructed him to do.
Oh, and remember, you may not pick up a weapon to defend yourself.
We prefer dead women to women who fight back.
So we block all the exits. And then when the next women is murdered, we say, “Oh, how terrible! Women, you need to open up about abuse! You need to break the silence!”
It’s not that we do nothing for women. We’re prepared to help them cope, adapt, hide, and so on. We support women in living with male violence. We’re just not prepared to free them from it.
Last Wednesday (29 March), Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus KC released two statements announcing the nature of the legislative reform the Albanese government plans to make to The Family Law Act.
The reforms aim to make separations safer for families and their children.
The first set of amendments is set to simplify the legislation, in response to issues that have arisen regarding the complexity of the act, leading to it being misunderstood in ways that have led to unsafe parenting arrangements:
These include but are not limited to:
- Repealing the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility;
- Simplifying the list of factors that are considered in determining the best interests of children in parenting arrangements;
- Introducing requirements for Independent Children’s Lawyers (ICLs);
- Ensuring the court considers the right of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children to maintain their connection to their family, community, culture, country and language; and
- Simplifying the enforcement of parenting orders to make the consequences of non-compliance clear.
The second set of amendments aims to improve access to vital information sharing from state and territory family violence and child protection systems during proceedings. These include:
- Introducing two new information-sharing orders for courts to quickly seek information from police and child protection agencies about family violence, abuse and neglect;
- Ensuring these orders are available at any point during proceedings; and
- Increasing protections to ensure sensitive information is disclosed safely
Mr Peleg highlighted where the amendments fall short: “The new definition of the principle of the best interests of the child falls short of international children’s rights law standards and best practices in other countries, despite what the government claims.”
“While it makes children’s views an inherent part of the best interests analysis, which is an improvement comparing to the law today that makes it a potential element only, the new law is drafted in passive tone, asking the court to consider ‘any views expressed by the child’ instead of using active voice requiring the court to ascertain the views of children.”
Source: The pros and cons of the proposed family law reforms – Lawyers Weekly
Public inquiries are held to inform the public of misconduct and begin discussion on how to address issues. So why have we heard nothing about the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women?
The Senate inquiry closed public submissions last December. There is no known future schedule of public hearings, and the inquiry’s methods and ways of working have not been made known to the public. Only one media release – announcing its formation – has ever been issued.
The inquiry itself seems to have gone missing, which worsens the crisis it aims to investigate. This silence speaks to the conditions that make it possible for so many Indigenous women to go missing and be murdered.
In our submission to the inquiry, we highlighted that missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people are never simply “missing”. They do not just vanish from their homes, families and Country. They are violently disappeared.
This is significant because when we examined police investigations into the disappearance of Aboriginal women, the term “missing” seemed to bring with it a pattern of inaction. Missing Indigenous women are typically framed as responsible for their own disappearance.
They do not get afforded the same effort and attention in media and investigations afforded others.
Because of this inaction, there is rarely accountability for violence against Indigenous women. This sets a dangerous pattern where perpetrators know they can get away with acts of violence. We argue this is the underlying cause of the high rates of all forms of violence experienced by Indigenous women.
Source: What happened to the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women?
One-third of Australians surveyed think women use sexual assault claims as retribution and nearly one in four believe women make allegations because they regret consensual sex, as government-funded research shows a backlash in attitudes to women.
The National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey, which is held every four years, found 35 per cent of 19,100 respondents agreed “it is common for sexual assault accusations to be used as a way of getting back at men”.
Meanwhile, 24 per cent agreed “a lot of times, women who say they were raped had led the man on and then had regrets”.
Australian research has found false allegations of sexual assault are extremely rare and 87 per cent of victim-survivors do not tell police.
The study, released on Wednesday by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, measures changes in attitudes between 2017 and 2021, and shows that while most people reject attitudes condoning violence against women, there was no improvement in rejection of domestic violence.
Improved attitudes to sexual violence and gender inequality were significant, but even so, “some respondents endorsed hostile gendered stereotypes of women as malicious, vengeful and untrustworthy”.
Significant mistrust of women was shown by the 37 per cent of respondents who thought those in custody battles “often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence to improve their case”, and that many women exaggerate the extent of men’s violence against women (23 per cent).
Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of respondents thought “a lot of what is called domestic violence is really just a normal reaction to day-to-day stress and frustration” and less than half believe it happens in their suburb.
Two in five people wrongly believed women and men were equally likely to perpetrate domestic violence, when data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows 75 per cent of family violence victims identify the perpetrator as male, compared with 25 per cent reporting them as female.
Some believed, incorrectly, that men and women are equally likely to suffer harm from domestic violence (21 per cent) and fear from it (28 per cent).
Source: 12ft | ANROWS survey shows one in three think women use sex assault claims to ‘get back at men’
Amazingly, a British mother purposely instigated her own arrest and prosecution so she could use a criminal trial, open to the public, to expose injustice she and other mothers are experiencing in the family court system. Her three day trial occurred last week.
Kate’s Family Court case began over a decade ago and she has been posting about it on social media for years. This has led to multiple short stints in jail, likely for civil contempt. However, this appears to be her first criminal conviction.
Kate’s daughter first disclosed sexual abuse by her father when she was five years-old. The father was criminally charged, but not convicted, in part due to the fact that CPS did not provide the evidence they had gathered. But it is unlikely he would have been convicted anyway as fathers rarely are.
A Family Court judge dismissed the daughter’s brave reports, shifting blame to Kate. The father was given custody of both of her children and he was subsequently allowed to alienate them from her. Per usual.
Kate was charged with 12 counts of violating a gag order. The prosecutor had to convince the jury that she had breached the restraining order without a “reasonable excuse” for doing so.
The prosecutor, in effect arguing the father’s position, used sexist tropes to discredit Kate to the jury. He told them she was a vindictive liar who had brainwashed her daughter to disclose sexual abuse, and that she was on a campaign to destroy the father’s life. He persuaded them that the father was the real victim, a long-standing sufferer of domestic abuse at the hands of Kate.
Kate’s position was that the truth and her honest intentions provided the “reasonable excuse” necessary to be acquitted.
Ironically, Kate was prosecuted for exposing the cover up of sexual abuse in Family Court, and the prosecution itself serves to cover up the cover up by discrediting her at trial and depriving her of her freedom—in furtherance of a future cover up.
Source: Mother Instigates Own Arrest to Expose Family Court Injustice
The Family Court’s emphasis on shared custody has left children vulnerable to abusive fathers, but changes are coming that should put the child’s interests first.
Women repeatedly told me that their history of experiencing domestic violence, even when reported to police, even when it resulted in AVOs, even when there were witnesses, was not just disregarded by the court but caused the women to be regarded with suspicion.
Pip Rae, who worked as a New South Wales police officer for 20 years, dealing primarily with domestic violence, points her finger at systemic issues. Now a private investigator, she says that child protection services and police work at cross-purposes. “Child protection services have three criteria: no risk, significant risk and high risk. Police have innocent or guilty.”
Despite increased social awareness and understanding of the complexities and dangers of family violence, Rae says, the system has deteriorated. “In 2002, due to cost blowouts, the requirement for prosecution shifted from ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ or prima facie to ‘likelihood of getting a conviction’, and this led to sexual assault and DV charges being less likely to get up, because they are more difficult to prove.”
Angela Lynch, advocacy manager for domestic violence service provider Full Stop Australia, agrees. “Since 2006, in response to lobbying by men’s rights groups, the Family Court must start from a presumption of equal, shared parental responsibility. This works fine in most divorces but those that come before the court are the most complex: 80 per cent of matters in the Family Court have a background of family violence and 70 per cent a background of child abuse.”
Like many similar services, Full Stop has made a submission to the federal government in response to proposed new legislation that would reverse changes made to the Family Court in 2006. The proposals are to place the interest of the child at the centre of the court’s responsibilities when it comes to custody and access arrangements. The consultation period ended this week and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has promised to legislate this year.
“The presumption of shared parental responsibility has contributed to a demonisation of mothers, especially if they allege family violence or child abuse,” Lynch says. “They are immediately seen as hostile to the system norm of shared parenting.”
Laura, a lawyer, says she was so traumatised by the violence she experienced at the hands of her ex-partner, which included rape, strangulations and attempts to run her over, she was unable to cope with shared access. She collapsed at handovers and later in the court, where she was accused of “faking”.
Misdiagnosed by a court-appointed expert as suffering from borderline personality disorder – she has since been re-diagnosed with PTSD – she lost custody of her son to the man who had terrorised her.
Laura says many lawyers explicitly warn their clients against alleging family violence or child abuse, even if, as in Laura’s case, their partner was charged by police and convicted.
The consequence of this shared-parenting emphasis in complex Family Court battles has been decades of devastated mothers and children sent back into high-risk situations. Jen’s daughter is an adult now, but no longer has any relationship with either of her parents. As Laura says, “You can leave the violent relationship, but the Family Court won’t let you escape it. Not with your child.”
Source: How the Family Court has failed children | The Saturday Paper
From abduction to protection: ending the injustices of the Hague Convention – Zoom, Fri 21 Apr 2023 – Hague Mothers, FiLiA, & Brunel University Global Lives Research Centre are delighted to host an International Webinar on 21 April 2023 at 22.00-23.45 BST*
A suite of domestic violence reforms passed in the Queensland parliament will strengthen protection for victims.
The changes will expand the definition of domestic and family abuse to include a “pattern of behaviour” and will strengthen the offence of stalking.
The amendments also strengthen the court’s ability to consider previous domestic violence or criminal history and to award costs to avoid further abuse to victims.
Sue and Lloyd Clarke, the parents and grandparents of Hannah Clarke and her three children who were murdered by Hannah’s estranged partner in 2020, spoke outside parliament today.
Ms Fentiman, who is also the Minister for Justice and Minister for Women, said the reforms would include “extensive” training for frontline services, like police and domestic and family violence support services, to better identify and respond to coercive control.
“At the moment, really, our system is set up to respond to one individual incident of physical violence. That is not how domestic and family violence is experienced by so many victims,” she said.
State and territory attorneys-general met with federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in August to debate whether to criminalise coercive control nationally, and Ms Fentiman said consistency between states on criminal law was preferable.
Trigger warning: extremely disturbing but important content.
Familicide after divorce or separation by revenge- and control-obsessed fathers is a societal problem the world over. A significant subsection of these murders are being committed by fathers who’ve sexually abused the children. In these recent Colorado cases, it was no different.
A summary of the cases here is followed by a critique of the gender-neutral language and framing of the issue, which serves to mislead the public as to the real cause of the Custody Crisis.
Source: 4 Family Court-Enabled Child Murders in 2 Months in 1 State
