Approximately 20,000 applications are filed in the family court every year and about half of those involve parenting matters.
The latest figures show almost all custody disputes involve serious allegations against one or both parents, with 91 per cent having major risk factors such as family violence, child abuse, serious mental health issues and substance issues.
National cabinet met on Friday to discuss the findings of an expert panel’s rapid review into domestic violence.
The panel recommends “immediate audits of the weaponisation of government systems by perpetrators of domestic and family violence”, including the family law system.
“A well-recognised source of systems abuse includes the family law system, in which perpetrators attempt to drain the resources of victim-survivors through protracted and incessant legal proceedings; insisting on care arrangements which are unsafe and do not reflect the wishes of a child and, as research indicates, undermining the mother-child bond by coaching children to view their mother in a negative light.”
Studies conducted in both the US and Australia have found perpetrators of family violence are commonly granted contact with their children.
A 2020 US study found in that judicial system “women who allege abuse – particularly child abuse – by a father are at significant risk (over one in four) of losing custody” of their children.
The study explains that: “even when courts find that fathers have abused the children or the mother, they award them custody 13 per cent of the time.” And in cases with credible child physical abuse claims, abusers still win custody 20 per cent of the time.
Australian research that looked at published judgements between 2012 and 2019, found 35 per cent of fully contested cases resulted in shared custody when allegations of abuse were made and 23 per cent of cases resulted in custody being switched to the allegedly unsafe parent.