All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
Australia’s Family Court has spent more than $63.8 million expanding its so-called Lighthouse Program, promoted as “world-leading” and “trauma-informed.”
In reality, Lighthouse has become a risk-management business, not a human-centred justice service. It performs accountability instead of enforcing it, measuring image, not impact.
Survivors across Australia describe it as bureaucratic, tokenistic, and dangerous in outcome. FCAN’s investigation reveals how public funding meant for safety has been absorbed into internal staffing, PR, and process while women and children remain unprotected.
Until there is transparent reporting, independent oversight, and genuine survivor participation in reform, programs like Lighthouse will remain costly illusions — bright on paper, but blind to the darkness families are still living in.
Source: Lighthouse Illusion — Family Court Accountability Network (FCAN)