Australia's Family Law System is Not Child Centred
A deep dive into the Family Court.
Australia’s Approach to Family Law is Not Child-Centred
With Domestic Violence dominating the mainstream headlines last week, and other people in the independent media checking the numbers as I did in a previous Substack and likewise finding they don’t add up, I was very tempted to wade back into that argument. But the more we look at DV, the more obvious it is a complex problem, nothing that can be fixed by any simple measure, and to focus on one thing - like “blame men!”, or “it’s mostly Aborigines!” or “what about [insert prejudice here]” - simply shows a refusal to accept the complexity.
Why? Well, for one thing, many of the feminists who one might be tempted to rail against as they tell us falsely that “28 women have died from intimate partner violence this year!!!” (this video I saw from a conservative YouTuber I am not familiar with demonstrates the actual number is 8, lower than last year) are angry and frustrated not just at the high levels of women being reported as murdered - irrespective of whoever is killing them - but also because frontline services are constantly telling us they are overstretched and flooded with clients. We hear in all directions that DV is a crisis, and simply rebutting the most emotional numbers may not change that, nor indeed refute what may very well be a crisis. Today, two women were killed by a known male (they knew his wife?) in Perth in a double murder / suicide: the police are not treating it as DV (remember that for later) but of course the first reaction is, let’s say, “gendered”.
And the answer to this crisis, real or exaggerated, is that there are several interconnected complex causes that drive domestic violence - poverty, mental health issues, trauma, substance abuse, and fatherlessness - none of which is going to go away any time soon or can simply be legislated against or solved with a funding boost. This of course only increases the anger and frustration and the probability that feminists will lash out, blaming all men or all politicians or whoever they can blame. Fighting against that achieves nothing. I would much rather focus on my particular field, which is trying to reduce child abuse to tackle the ‘trauma’ component.
And as I do so, I see plenty of evidence that fixing this particular complement will have a massive impact not just on improving children’s lives, which should ipso facto be a priority, but improves the lives of pretty much everyone those grown-up children will be involved with. A chance to plant a tree so others can sit under its shade, or, if you prefer, fight for a sunrise we will never see.
THIS article, for instance, just came out and reminds us that 41% of mental health problems have their origin in childhood maltreatment. This is consistent with what I reported a few articles back on the origins of one specific issue, Borderline Personality Disorder, which showed trauma, while not the driving force (more likely to be organic rather than psychological, check the earlier article) was certainly a factor. 41% is still a huge chunk, and if we can get rid of that, again something we should be doing for its own sake, we can also make change in other areas like DV. If I may be allowed to quote a section:
The research, which draws on a 2023 meta-analysis of 34 research studies covering 54,000 people, found maltreatment accounted for 41 per cent of suicide attempts in Australia, 35 per cent of self-harm cases and 21 per cent of depression episodes.
It defined childhood maltreatment as physical, sexual, emotional abuse, emotional or physical neglect and domestic violence before the age of 18.
Lead researcher Lucy Grummitt said it is the first piece of work to quantify the direct impact of child abuse on long-term mental health.
It found if childhood maltreatment was eradicated it would avert more than 1.8 million cases of depression, anxiety and substance use disorders.
As I said, these things are interconnected - substance abuse and mental health go hand in hand, that is beyond dispute, and if we are thinking from a DV perspective, people do things when they are drunk they would never do when sober. Some people. It’s not an excuse, it’s a chance to stop things.
Elsewhere last week, I also came across THIS article from the Conversation, once again proof that I read all sorts to keep abreast of a debate. This particular article is quite good and says much the same things I do, and backs them up: the title, “To tackle gendered violence, we also need to look at drugs, trauma and mental health” says it all, and after sensibly looking at the issues, it makes several suggestions about what and how to tackle the problem:
Supporting victim-survivors and improving interventions for perpetrators are both needed. However, intervening once violence has occurred is arguably too late.
We need to direct our efforts towards broader, holistic approaches to prevent and reduce intimate partner violence, including addressing the underlying contributors to violence we’ve outlined.
We also need to look more widely at preventing intimate partner violence and gendered violence.
We need developmentally appropriate education and skills-based programs for adolescents to prevent the emergence of unhealthy relationship patterns before they become established.
We also need to address the social determinants of health that contribute to violence. This includes improving access to affordable housing, employment opportunities and accessible health-care support and treatment options.
All these will be critical if we are to break the cycle of intimate partner violence and improve outcomes for victim-survivors.
These are great. The only real down-side to this is the fact that they keep seeing the problem as ‘gendered’. A broad, holistic approach such as we need to tackle all these problems is not a gendered issue, it involves both sexes changing their thinking and behaviour, and prioritising children: something much harder for women, perhaps, as putting children as the focus of social thinking, policies and programs will mean women relinquishing that privileged spot.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any such approach, instead of an ‘holistic’ approach we have a very much gendered approach, as you will remember from my second article [LINK] on DV and Child Abuse where I pointed out that all the DV data collection was driven by an, “end violence against women” policy approach. We can’t even get proper data (I’ll revisit this below) let alone proper policy. So things are getting worse: THIS article follows the one I wrote last, about ‘Joan’ the whistleblower and the problems in the child protection sector, problems I thought were getting better when I worked there but clearly are not, because the child protection sector is only responding to what is going on in society and society is getting worse. More child abuse, more neglect, more children growing up with serious issues, self-medicating with substance abuse and lashing out at others and perpetuating the cycle. That article details a Child Protection sector in absolute crisis.
And so we come to Family Law.
The Family Court system here in Australia is in the news fairly regularly. Just last week, I saw THIS article in The Conversation, not a bad read at all, you should still be able to pick up on the biases, but the reporting is accurate, as rare as that seems to be nowadays.
The article informs us that the current Labor government made changes to the previous conservative government’s family law positions, specifically, the idea of equal parental responsibility: I’ll go into that, and look briefly at its history, below.
The issue of how to simply constitute the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court which deals with family law issues is a matter of contention. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) which 2017-2019 conducted the first review since its establishment in 1975 (you may remember my last article examining the disingenuousness of commentators complaining that ‘MRAs want another inquiry into the Family Court, we’ve had so many!!!’) regarded the system as ‘in crisis’, with the Chief Justice (same source) saying it took “about 17 months from filing to hearing, some people have to wait up to three years to get their case to trial” - not a direct quote - and nearly a third of people in the system having to represent themselves. That ALRC review said the Federal Family Court should be ‘scrapped’ and the states be given these powers, since the handling of domestic violence and child protection matters is at the state level, and this would allow better outcomes for safety than Federal and State agencies having to try to work together. This makes sense, but would also require the creation of family courts at State level, creating duplication, and still require federal funding and federal laws to prevent parents moving jurisdictions to get better outcomes, and handle scenarios where parents may end up in different states etc. The alternative, a proper national framework to integrate the work of the states and the Family Court, simply wasn’t happening.
The (conservative) government wanted to merge the Family Court and Federal Circuit Courts, and tried to do this in 2018 before this review was even handed down, likewise citing a desire to streamline, remove duplication, make things go faster etc. The legal sector opposed this, citing lack of consultation and saying they wanted to wait for the review, and the government couldn’t get the numbers in the Senate. If you’re wondering what the differences between the courts are, THIS article explains:
The Family Court currently hears family law cases involving complex financial arrangements, trusts, serious parenting arguments, allegations of child abuse in custody arrangements and protracted family disputes.
The Federal Circuit Court deals with the rest.
So, the Federal Circuit deals with the fairly straight-forward stuff and the Family Court deals with the more complicated, contentious and knock-down drag-out fights: that makes sense to me, the way having separate queues at the bank for whether you want a simple telling transaction or the rigmarole of opening a new account makes sense to me.
Why is this all such a drama? Writing about this, I can see two ‘sides’: firstly, the fact that all legal proceedings take time, and these are taking a lot of time, and more time in court means more expense with lawyers, more stress etc. So, on one side, you have the need to make it all more efficient, go faster etc.
On the other side, there is the issue of domestic violence and child safety and the fact that when allegations are raised, there needs to be some sort of investigation, if only by contact workers supervising interactions or a psychologist or JIRT professional or social worker familiar with it all making a report. This also takes time and money, and no amount of ‘streamlining’ will fix this, in fact, rushing to an outcome makes the safety risks greater.
Then there are all the things we heard above that drag things out, like complex financial settlements and recalcitrant parents and legal manoeuvres and counter-testimony from ‘experts’, which clog up the courts, as well as delays in appointing judges and understaffing in other areas. The ABC, in THIS article previously cited, have a moment of rare equality that snuck past the editors and actually give us a father’s perspective:
‘Tom’ said it took him almost three years to get a family order giving him access to his children after his separation. But on his third access visit the children never arrived. That was a year ago and he has not seen them since.
He said the police would not get involved and his only option was to go back to the courts.
"The Family Court system is a lengthy process, costly and I don't have a lot of faith that if I go back one more time that my partner will comply," he said.
He said he had spent almost $100,000 going through the process the first time and has since been diagnosed with depression.
I can only assume Tom is gay, since while the ABC will not criticise the mother either way, they generally won’t even run a story that could imply criticism of the mother without extensive defence and giving her side. Ergo the non-compliant partner must also be male.
The two sides I saw to this problem - are they gendered? It is tempting to see the men who are struggling to realise any sort of contact with their children and having the courts weaponised against them as wanting more efficient handling of court matters, while the women who are using the court system for these outcomes as wanting more focus on their claims of violence and removing the father to keep the ‘child’ safe - and I use inverted commas because that argument is not child-centred, as I will shortly show. But this is a drastic over-simplification. The safety issues around the Family Court are very real, while the slowness, inefficiencies and bureaucratic issues affect women as much as men. Nobody (except a minority of lawyers, and an even smaller minority of vindictive litigants) likes or benefits from the drawn-out drama of Family Court.
Moving forward, we have the current government. In October last year they made much-publicised changes to the Family Court - discussion HERE, actual legislation HERE - that most importantly removed that “equal shared parental responsibility” presumption, introduced in 2006 by a previous conservative government after a 2003 review.
A quick recap of the 2006 changes, drawing on a report commissioned by that conservative Howard government as to how the changes were working, but handed down under the subsequent Rudd Labor government in 2009 (summary report HERE which I will refer to, full report HERE). The summary starts on page 1 (pg 10 of the pdf) saying:
In 2006, the Australian Government introduced a series of changes to the family law system. These included changes to the Family Law Act 1975 and increased funding for new and expanded family relationships services, including the establishment of 65 Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) and a national advice line. The aim of the reforms was to bring about “generational change in family law” and a “cultural shift” in the management of parental separation, “away from litigation and towards co-operative parenting”.
The 2006 reforms were partly shaped by the recognition that although the focus must always be on the best interests of the child, many of the disputes over children following separation are driven by relationship problems rather than legal ones. These disputes are often better suited to community-based interventions that focus on how unresolved relationship issues impact on children and assist in reaching parenting agreements that meet the needs of children.
These 65 FRCs were open by October 2008, so they were quite serious about making that happen. Regarding what became the contentious issue of “equal parental responsibility” presumption, the report says (pg 12) that “The principle that parents should share responsibility for their children after separation had very strong support from parents, family relationship service professionals and family law system professionals”, so accordingly the following changes were made (pg 2):
The changes to the family law system included changes to both the legislation and the family relationship services system. The legislative changes comprised four main elements, which:
■ require parents to attend family dispute resolution (FDR) before filing a court application, except in certain circumstances, including where there are concerns about family violence and child abuse (SPR Act 2006 s60(I));
■ place increased emphasis on the need for both parents to be involved in their children’s lives after separation, through a range of provisions, including the introduction of a presumption in favour of equal shared parental responsibility (SPR Act 2006 s61DA; see also s60B(1)(a), s60CC(2)(a));
■ place greater emphasis on the need to protect children from exposure to family violence and child abuse (SPR Act 2006 s60B(1)(b), s60CC(2)(b)); and
■ introduce legislative support for less adversarial court processes in children’s matters (SPR Act 2006 Division 12A of Part VII).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but every one of those sounds reasonable. Of course, good ideas and good outcomes don’t always go hand in hand, so let’s see what report decided after interviewing 28000 people who went through the new system. You can go through section 3 for the findings: 62% of mothers and 64% of fathers who went through the system said they were able to work with each other - they had “friendly or cooperative relationships with each other about 15 months after separation” (pg 5) - and ¾ said they sorted things out (parenting-wise) within a year of separation (pg 7). This is a good start, albeit the main mechanism did not change from before 2006 - parents who were able to get along with each other, just sorted things out themselves “followed by a sense that the arrangements “just happened”.” They also felt less need for lawyers after 2006. But for those who went to court, more than half alleged violence / abuse and overall, about 20% had ongoing safety concerns. More women than men alleged physical and emotional abuse, but there was still plenty of allegations on both sides. At the extreme end, there were problems with complex cases - see pg 8 - with additional training for staff dealing with such things, and the admission, “some clients reported that they felt pressured into FDR or into reaching an agreement” (FDR is dispute resolution), although there is “considerable overlap between client use of lawyers and client use of FDR” so these parents were not just being forced into some sort of one-sided mediation process but had legal counsel to support them.
Section 3.5 (pp 8-9) deals with care time arrangements and, again, is worth reading if you are interested. It starts:
A key objective of the 2006 family law reforms was to encourage greater involvement of both parents in their children’s lives after separation, provided that the children are protected from family violence or child abuse. “Involvement” entails such matters as: (a) taking primary care of the children, including overnight where possible; (b) contributing to decisions affecting children’s general lifestyle and welfare; and (c) providing financial support. The concept of “parental involvement” thus overlaps with the exercise of “parental responsibility”, although involvement may be understood as “what happens”, whereas “responsibility” conveys notions of accountability or obligation.
By the end, we are told that,
Most children spent most or all nights with their mother, with one-third spending all nights with their mother. Of the children who never stayed overnight with their father, two-thirds saw their father during the day and the other third did not see him at all.
…
In short, traditional care-time arrangements, involving more nights with the mother than father, remained the most common and appear to be the most stable arrangement over a 4- to 5-year interval. However, shared care time is increasing both among separated families in general and among those whose dispute was litigated, especially among families whose dispute was finalised through judicial determination.
This latter outcome - fathers got slightly better outcomes if they went to court and fought for them - was also seen in the earlier years. We’ll go through the numbers below, but clearly the introduction of ‘equal parenting responsibility’ did not even create equal outcomes for fathers or for children wanting and needing their fathers in their lives, let alone creating some hellscape where abusive men reigned supreme and mothers were routinely cut out of children’s lives. Quite the opposite - the highest levels of fathers who reported experiencing physical and emotional abuse in the relationship were very much in the, “my child never sees me now” category (pg 10), but this group also had high levels of mothers reporting that the fathers had mental health, substance abuse and gambling issues (I’m not sure how much, if any, overlap there is between these two groups).
Overall, the impression I got from the evaluation on pg 10 was, the more likely there was to have been violence in the relationship - alleged by either parents - the less likely the father was to have been involved in the child’s life, whether cut out completely or reduced to day-time only or occasional overnight visits.
Despite this, that presumption has regularly been targeted and has now been abolished. This was agitated for by women’s groups and the left in general. The left-leaning Conversation said “It will become one of the most important laws passed this year”, and “we should celebrate that this bill is passing through parliament”, based predominantly on the removal of this presumption. The problems the “presumption” created were, I believe, two-fold:
an opportunity for the most evil of DV perpetrators to continue to exercise control over their partners and intimidate, harass or threaten them or otherwise place their children or former partners at risk
Confusion around exactly what it meant, leading many to believe that “equal responsibility” meant equal custody, equal parenting time etc.
Looking at the second issue, I must confess, back in the day I was one of those people, I thought one of the few good things the Howard government had ever done (who, in my opinion, were otherwise war criminals, among other things) was introducing equal custody as the starting point for children’s custodial matters. I was wrong - I was ignorant.
But, does this ignorance extend to people actually in the family law system, being advised by lawyers or corrected by magistrates or at the very least speaking with Legal Aid? This seems unlikely, especially when you look at how it was introduced by the government, with caveats and explanations and a ‘rebuttable presumption’. In fact, we might wonder how much of the ignorance around this was created by fear-mongers on the left warning that women would have to share custody of ‘their’ children with violent men.
How did the current (Labor) government actually argue for these changes? If we look again at THIS article from the Conversation, we see it links to an op-ed from the Attorney General explaining his thinking as to why the ‘Equal Parenting Responsibility’ presumption was removed. It’s quite partisan, but obviously needs to be considered (his tweet is HERE, you’ll forgive me if I don’t use the cesspool of social media, while the original article looks like it was in the Tele and thus I suspect is behind a paywall). It also says a lot in a short space and I urge you to go and read it, if interested. He says that the original Family Court (est. 1975) was built on the principle of prioritising the best interests of the children but this has been eroded and, “the principle was dealt a serious blow when the Howard government inserted the presumption of equal shared responsibility… this ill-advised step has created ongoing confusion and delivered prolonged litigation and conflict”. Litigation by whom? Fathers exercising their rights, or mothers fighting against the fathers exercising their rights? Neither is a reason to remove the presumption. If the confusion needs to be explained, explain it - if the system needs to work more safely for families (and much of the rest of his op-ed is about increasing safety) then implement procedures such as mentioned above, where parents are better able to fix or navigate disputes without contact (and I absolutely respect that many women want to have no contact whatsoever with the child’s father, but this does not mean he’s any sort of threat to the child, let alone a substantiated threat - if he is, then supervised contact or no contact should of course be the result). There are ways to achieve this without denying children access to their fathers or denying the father’s voice in the child’s life.
The Attorney General (Mark Dreyfus) again and again asserts that it is not in the children’s best interests for their to be a presumption that parents have an equal say in the child’s life, while simultaneously acknowledging that, “for most children, it is overwhelmingly in their best interests to have a meaningful relationship with both parents after separation”. So it is overwhelmingly good for children to have a relationship, which means time and contact, but not for the parent to have an equal voice? This makes no sense - how is it child centred?
The other issue he raises extensively, “safety” is constantly described by Dreyfuss as being “child-focussed”, but is looked at almost exclusively in terms of the mother or wider family. Safety issues for both the child and the mother, as I mentioned above, are not trivial - an abusive man may certainly try to intimidate or threaten his former partner in these situations, and of course someone who molested their child may want to have access for the worst reasons. But it hardly needs to be said, issues around domestic violence were included in the original “presumption”. It was a “rebuttable” presumption which could, as the name suggests, be rebutted if there was violence or another reasonable reason to do so - it was never about locking in women or children (or anyone else) into having to experience ongoing violence. If we look at the 2003 report that led to the 2006 legislative changes, we see the following flat-out statement on violence:
On the relationship between family violence, substance abuse, child abuse and shared parenting, rebuttal of any presumption in cases of ‘proven’ history of family violence, substance abuse or of child abuse was a unanimously held view in the inquiry. (2.26)
The definitions of violence and potential victim were quite broad, too - the 2006 legislation defined violence this way:
"family violence" means conduct, whether actual or threatened, by a person towards, or towards the property of, a member of the person’s family that causes that or any other member of the person’s family reasonably to fear for, or reasonably to be apprehensive about, his or her personal wellbeing or safety.
Note: A person reasonably fears for, or reasonably is apprehensive about, his or her personal wellbeing or safety in particular circumstances if a reasonable person in those circumstances would fear for, or be apprehensive about, his or her personal wellbeing or safety
“Family” itself is then defined as:
(i) a step‑parent of the child; or
(ii) a brother, sister, half‑brother, half‑sister, step‑brother or step‑sister of the child; or
(iii) a grandparent of the child; or
(iv) an uncle or aunt of the child; or
(v) a nephew or niece of the child; or
(vi) a cousin of the child
So any sort of behaviour toward any of this extended family, or their property, that made them apprehensive about their well-being could see the presumption rebutted. Hardly a high bar, or something that would lead to ongoing violence against women and children if not removed.
Yet removed it was. Even this section on family had to be extended, apparently - the Women’s Legal Service made a submission on behalf of a huge number of organisations that wanted, among other things, at recommendation 1.2
The safety provisions in proposed s60CC(2)(a) should not be limited only to the child and those who have parental responsibility for the child. This provision should include consideration of the safety of “children” and “each person who is significant to the child’s care, welfare and development.”
I am, frankly, suspicious of this, for the reason that I have given numerous exemplars of in previous articles - that such things are only policed one way. Imagine a father getting into conflict with the brothers of his wife (a common occurrence in honour-based cultures where male members of a family will aggressively defend their female kin during separation) - this would be used as evidence that the father is violent and the matter should be decided for the mother. Now imagine the mother getting into conflict with the father’s family - does anyone think this would be understood in the father’s favour? No, it would likewise be seen as evidence of the father’s family being violent and a danger, and again the matter would be decided for the mother.
I am also suspicious of all this for the obvious reason that it ceases to be child-centred. If the child is at risk from a parent or someone in one parent’s family (a mother wanting to keep her kids away from the creepy uncle on the father’s side, for instance) by all means put that front and centre. But when it is someone other than the child who may be at risk or feels threatened, well, there are ways around that. Specifically, if a parent feels threatened or someone in their family feels threatened, or even if parent A has an AVO against parent B, then you do the handover at a Community Services office: parent A drops the kids off at 1530, parent B picks them up at 1600, and the onus is on parent B (as the one who is the subject of the AVO) not to turn up early or hang around outside or whatever (if parent A turns up late and runs into parent B, get parent A some time management classes).
Going back to the example I gave in [one of my first articles], of two small children being removed from a household because, as far as I could tell, of domestic conflict initiated by the mother-in-law, it was bad enough that they removed the children not the woman. In this case, they would now prevent the father from having access to ‘protect’ the mother-in-law.
Now, let’s be clear, the Family Court does need overhauling, the long wait times, up to 40% of litigants who have to self-represent, and, frankly, outcomes, all need change. Better funding. Better thinking. And while I don’t think much of the merger of the Family and Federal Circuit courts, areas that improve efficiencies would certainly help everyone if not coming at the cost of safety or just outcomes. Just outcomes, child-centred outcomes, delivered more efficiently, should perhaps be a focus.
But in my opinion this does not seem to be the focus of groups like the Women’s Legal Service. Their submission, while beginning with legalese and suggestions how this or that part of the legislation be amended to create better outcomes for children, drops all pretence when they get to the issue of the presumption of Equal Parenting Responsibility. Pg 13 of their submission says, “WLSA has long advocated for the removal of the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility on the basis that it incentivises violent fathers to litigate through the family law courts, enables violent men to exert ongoing power and control, and has created a well-entrenched community misunderstanding that both parents are entitled to equal time regardless of family violence and abuse.” The last claim - that the wider community believed the presumption held regardless of family violence and abuse is, frankly, nonsense - yes, I can well see an abusive man trying to con people of this, but claiming it was the prevailing community view, despite both the legislation, the reports and the government promotions all saying the opposite… let’s just say, CITATION NEEDED on that one. And again, I have to wonder how much of the misinformation and misunderstanding of what ‘equal responsibility’ did, and did not mean, comes from the ignorant or the malicious spreading scare campaigns about how it would allow violent men access to their children despite the law saying the opposite?
When we look at the arguments used for removing the equal presumption of responsibility, we see reference to research such as this: Legal System Abuse and Coercive Control. This is, according to its abstract, “Drawing on interviews with 65 women who engaged with the legal system as a result of violence in their intimate relationships, this article explores how women’s engagement with the legal system is frequently experienced as an extension of an intimate partner’s coercive control”. It is something that looks purely and solely at the women’s experience, apparently based on the presumption only men exert coercive control, and that dealing with domestic violence means dealing with this very worst form. Other research like THIS and THIS and THIS book about the family court that is constantly alluded to in these articles and everything ANROWS does likewise prioritise the woman’s perspective and try to convince us this is the nature of abuse and violence.
This is not true. We saw that in my earlier articles - and this is why I spent several articles and dozens of pages trawling through both the statistics and the literature on domestic violence - is so that we know that assumptions like this, that it is only men who abuse, and coercive control is the norm when it comes to DV or even IPV - these are not true.
Is there any truth to any of it? Well, the Conversation tells us:
The grim reality is that family violence is the norm, not the exception in family law. Recent data shows well over half of cases before the family court involve allegations of family violence against children or one parent.
The ‘recent data’ doc says more than they realise. Firstly, let’s look at the numbers. We know from my last article (and the Attorney General says in his little op-ed above) that the Family Court deals with about 3% of separations involving custody and property disputes. The ABS data for 2016 (2021 only gives us prevalence data) tells us that 2.6% of women experienced violence in their current relationship, 0.7% sexual violence, and 6.1% experience emotional abuse (including coercive control), compared to men 1.7% physical violence and 5.2% emotional abuse: these numbers are very high, but there will be a lot of overlap, both in terms of victims - a victim who alleges sexual violence will almost certainly claim physical and emotional abuse, for instance - and in terms of overlap in relationships, since volatile relationships where both parties can allege threats, abuse or actual violence against the other are the norm, not the exception, for DV. Furthermore, these numbers drop off by about half when they give us ‘in the past 12 months’ data, meaning a lot of people in longer-term relationships seem to remember experiencing abuse in the past that no longer happens. Since we can reasonably assume that abusive relationships are more likely to end in court than healthy happy ones, this is easily enough problems for the Family Court to be dealing with nothing but violent relationships, except the literature tells us that a lot of relationships that involved violence and abuse are still sorted out through mediation or just without going to court. For instance, that initial report into the 2006 changes says, “An important finding is that half of the parents separating after July 2006 who had sorted out their parenting arrangements [under the presumption of equal parenting responsibility] also reported having experienced family violence (with about twice as many reporting experiencing emotional abuse alone as those experiencing physical hurt)” (pg 7) but it was not a barrier to them coming to an arrangement for the child’s sake. I also previously used an AIFS report on allegations of violence in family law proceedings as a basis for looking into DV: the Federal Magistrates Court responded to that report HERE and acknowledged (pg 1), “the percentage of separating couples who do not institute legal proceedings despite violence or abuse being alleged”. This is also affirmed by something in the Women’s Legal Centre’s submission (pg 13) regarding how “significant number of family law matters are settled “in the shadow of the law””, a reference in context to abusive relationships still being sorted out without the court, albeit they of course try to frame it as “evil coercive men manipulating women into agreeing not to go to court”. As we have seen before (and I will go through the custody numbers again below) the small number of men that have meaningful contact with their child shows how ridiculous this reading is, and appears to come from a belief (for which I have previously shown evidence, and which is a consistent reading of what is happening in family law) that any men having custody of a child, or more access to the child than the mother approves of, is somehow evidence of the system not working.
But were they just the ’mutual’ violence scenarios, such that the Family Court still has to deal with the hard-core stuff like men either perpetrating coercive control and physical violence against a woman, or such a man playing the victim and rorting the system? This is where the data sheet comes in, because it says,
Initial court data at the point of filing reveals that:
• 54% of parties allege a child has been abused or is at risk of abuse
• 64% of parties allege they have experienced family violence
• 57% of parties allege a child has experienced family violence
• 39% of parties allege that drug, alcohol or substance misuse has caused harm or poses a risk of harm to a child
• 40% of parties allege that the mental ill-health of a party has caused harm or poses a risk of harm to a child.
So those last two numbers tell us we are dealing in nearly half the cases with risks of harm driven, not by ‘evil’, not simply by a calculating, controlling abuser, but by people who are a threat to their children (and possibly partners) due to poor mental health and substance abuse, probably with a lot of overlap between those numbers. There would likewise be an enormous amount of overlap with the 64% where the parent alleges they personally experienced family violence - and those claims come from both sides, not just from women. In fact, the fact sheet goes on to say that half the litigants who are ‘high risk’ (also 64% of the total) present with 4 or more risk factors of substance abuse, mental health issues etc.
The danger presented to a child by a mentally ill parent - possibly with trauma, drinking heavily to deal with their problems - and a ruthless and controlling abuser, are completely different. The narrative, then, that the Family Court is only ever dealing with women who are alleging violence at the hands of such a person, or else coercive men who are playing the victim to milk the system, is WRONG.
Are any of the men in the family court doing this? Of course, only a naive fool would pretend such things don’t happen. But likewise, when the entire narrative around child custody is about protecting mothers from fathers, only a fool would think this could not be rorted the other way. Yes, there are violent, controlling, abusive men out there: they are the ones who ruin lives, they are the ones who (in many cases) kill, and they are the ones who, accordingly, grab the headlines. But they are not the majority of fathers, they are not even the majority of domestic violence perpetrators, most of which is mutual or reciprocal or whatever word you want to use, and they should NOT be the baseline, or the norm, for how child custody arrangements are handled. The child should have a chance to spend time with both parents, equal time (at the very least with the parent of the same sex) unless mitigating reasons are demonstrated.
At this point, I feel the onus is on me to explain why equal parenting responsibility is child-centred, so I shall. And note, I am doing this in reaction to the recent changes, not because I am wedded to that particular idea: if it was up to me I would absolutely have EQUAL CUSTODY as the norm, to be changed only based on substantiated evidence of abuse that put THE CHILD in danger, because that would be the best outcome for THE CHILD. But, I recognise this would require a complete reworking of the entire system from the ground up and, at this point, is pretty pie-in-the-sky stuff. Let’s deal with what is in front of us.
Firstly, let me say how ridiculous it is that here we are in current year, and I have to make a case for equality. Equality should be the norm, it should be the baseline, it should be the gold standard. To start with “mothers get privilege, fathers have to get a lawyer to argue for their basic rights” seems utterly absurd in this day and age where we strive for equal opportunity in every area, and have done for generations now, yet here we are.
In fact, the idea that shared parenting - be it understood as time, responsibility or however it is defined - should be the norm, was apparently understood when reforms were made to the Family Law act in 1995 by the then Keating (Labor) government. The 2003 report (section 2) discusses this and is worth reproducing:
Unmet expectations
2.10 The Family Law Reform Act of 1995 was said to have intended to create a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting but the evidence to the inquiry clearly indicates that this is not reflected in what is happening either in the courts or in the community.
2.11 Section 60B of the Family Law Act (FLA) sets out the importance of a child’s right to continue to know and be cared for by both parents, but the predominant outcomes in post separation parenting do not support this.
2.12 ‘Custody’ and ‘access’, terms rejected in that reform to eliminate any sense of ownership of children have merely been replaced by ‘residence’ and ‘contact’. Behaviour has not changed and there is still a common winner/loser scenario. Many individual submitters have said they have acted on legal (and other) advice which appears to have perpetuated this scenario.
Again, if you are interested, this whole section of the report is a fascinating read and looks into how these issues were discussed in the past. The idea of “mum gets custody, dad gets second weekends and half the holidays” - an outcome so common in Australia as to have become proverbial - was known as the 80-20 rule, and although no ‘official’ direction to follow it was found, the data showed “something close to ‘80-20’ is the most common outcome, a justifiable confirmation for the perception of a rule to that effect” (2.14). And this despite shared parenting being the ‘rebuttable presumption’! Shared living arrangements actually halved following the 1995 reforms (2.15), to barely 2.5% of outcomes.
Now, we saw the claim that ‘equal parenting responsibility’ was abused by evil coercive men to create outcomes in their favour out of court - a claim not backed by the numbers (no, I still haven’t given those yet - you should know them from my previous articles, but I will repeat them soon enough) and yet the 2003 report actually tells us that women predominantly getting sole custody, and men just getting weekends came about as follows: “Out of court negotiated outcomes have favoured sole residence because they have been influenced by community perceptions, by experience of women as primary carers (6) and by perceptions and outcomes in court decisions” (2.13). And that footnote 6 is not some father’s group or whatever MRAs were called back then complaining - no, that is women’s groups! They were the ones, way back in 2003, telling us that women were the ‘primary carers’ of children - generally true - and this was not some evil patriarchal oppression designed to keep women in the home, but it was the appropriate way to view things and always give them custody of the kids, thanks.
Here is that footnote: “See Chapter 1; Women’s Economic Think Tank, Women’s Electoral Lobby, YWCA of Australia & Children by Choice, sub 742, p 3; The National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, sub 302, p 2.”
And here we are, in current year, and there have been some improvement in children getting to spend equal time with both parents, but not much, despite 20 years of ‘equal parental responsibility’, and now that has been rescinded as a great evil. <sigh> So much for equality.
Now, other than basic equality, and basic common sense: both parents having equal input, and equally valued input, reduces or negates the possibility that one or the other parents might make some weird or dangerous decision with no oversight - have the child sterilised because they wanted to experiment with their pronouns, for instance - what evidence do we have for supporting equal parental responsibility? Isn’t it a basic right of the child to know both parents, to have both parents active in their lives and on their behalf? Actually, it is one of the most basic and fundamental bedrock positions on child welfare and child rights, which are enshrined in the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child.
I believe that parents being able, and indeed encouraged, to exercise their responsibilities underpins much of the convention, but it is specifically stated or must be assumed in several sections, for instance, article 5:
States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention.
And again, article 14:
2. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right [to freedom of thought] in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.
But it is most clearly stated in article 18:
1. States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern.
2. For the purpose of guaranteeing and promoting the rights set forth in the present Convention, States Parties shall render appropriate assistance to parents and legal guardians in the performance of their child-rearing responsibilities and shall ensure the development of institutions, facilities and services for the care of children.
The State is there to assist parents in exercising their responsibilities, not deny or hinder it without damn good cause. Assisting both parents - yes that word is in there! - is the presumption.
And finally, article 29, regarding the education of the child, slips in the important reminder that education should focus on:
(d) The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin
Emphasis mine, of course: children should be prepared for, and indeed live, in a modern world of equality, not some archaic patriarchy where child-rearing is the domain of only the mother.
You may notice equality is a theme of my writings. Why does it feel we are moving farther away from it?
Having seen the basic rights of the child for the involvement of both parents are upheld by the Convention, can we see anything else that is impacting this other than the denial of Equal Responsibility? If we go back to the submission from the Women’s Legal Service, we see something fascinating: an acknowledgement, albeit a negative one, that women are the ones failing to show for custody handovers or contacts, and women are the ones rorting this side of the system. Let’s listen to ‘Tom’s story again:
‘Tom’ said it took him almost three years to get a family order giving him access to his children after his separation. But on his third access visit the children never arrived. That was a year ago and he has not seen them since.
He said the police would not get involved and his only option was to go back to the courts.
This is a common complaint of men - even when there are court orders or final orders in place that the father can see his child, the woman just doesn’t show up or refuses to give him access. If it is a weekend arrangement (as many are), well, the courts are shut, the Community Services offices are shut and if you want to ring and complain, you can spend hours on hold with the Kids Helpline waiting to speak to a case worker (I’ve been there a few times for my job as there were mix-ups or issues that needed input from the department) if you get through at all. If the police refuse to assist, and that also doesn’t surprise me, then the man’s only recourse is the expense of a lawyer and the endless wait for the court date. Notice that for ‘Tom’, when the partner got away with it once, they just kept doing it, and a year later, no contact and still no court appearance.
So, how do we know this is all true and not some nasty lie from MRAs, or something women occasionally do but men do more? This is a common tactic of feminist organisations, to claim that something that occurs to both sexes, or even men suffer more of, is something that women are the real victims of. Cyber-bullying, acting out from mental health problems, vindictiveness, weaponising the legal system, deceitfulness and, yes, domestic abuse itself, these are things that both sexes do, both sexes suffer, and yet feminists can only ever see one side and constantly try to claim it’s “gendered”. There are many examples of this but one of the worst surrounds parental alienation: this was something long argued against by feminists, who absolutely denied it existed even when men were reporting the gamut of these alienating behaviours far more often as a form of emotional abuse that their children, and they, were suffering at the hands of partners. Finally it was recognised as an undisputed form of parental behaviour in custody battles (though there is still fierce debate over whether it is a clearly diagnosable mental illness that the child can end up suffering) predominantly when it was recognised that yes, men absolutely do this to children as well, not to as great an extent but it still happens. I certainly know one single mother friend of mine who had her son turned against her by her ex (and his new partner) in a truly disgusting manner.
But of course, once it was recognised that this happens to mothers as well as fathers, it stopped being about the children and became a women’s issue. So we see the despicable end-point of that mentality in scenes such as the women’s organisation Shera advocating HERE and elsewhere for the changing of the name to “Child and Mother Sabotage”.
You can’t make this stuff up. Seriously, these are organisations that are about women first and children a distant, distant second. (Go and read that thing from Shera if you have a chance - they literally liken scientific discussion of diagnosing Parental Alienation to the development of Thalidomide. I’m not kidding.)
So why would I think that’s what’s happening with parents failing to turn up to custody visits or failing to allow the non-custodial parent access? How do we know this isn’t coercive manipulative men doing all this? Other than the simple numbers - and I will say yet again, if men are doing this as a tactic they absolutely SUCK at it because it is achieving the exact opposite outcomes - we have the testimony of the Women’s Legal Service, who say (pg 14) “The evidence shows that non-compliance in family law is complex and commonly relates to safety concerns, child refusal, and the orders themselves being confusing and/or not implementable.” But hang on, surely this is more men manipulating the system and refusing to return / hand over kids, isn’t it? Apparently not… they actually say, “many of our clients contravene orders in circumstances where they have serious concerns for the safety of their children and for themselves and they should not be penalised for trying to act protectively, even though they have not met the evidential threshold of reasonable excuse.” Emphasis mine, obviously - contravened the orders without evidence basically means, “take our words for it”. Take the word of someone who has refused to follow a court order? No. Hold that person accountable. If there is evidence, fine, we are dealing with child protection here and the child should be prioritised, but if the child is being restricted from lawful access to a parent, that is the opposite of the child being prioritised.
All of this - ignoring the needs of the child because the parent doesn’t feel comfortable, or because “someone important in the child’s life” feels threatened - is the opposite of the the child being prioritised. Where there are concerns, they can be dealt with - not having the two parents face each other in a court room, for instance, even using separate entries and exits, or have a qualified psychologist along with the child’s lawyer speak to them to see if the child is in fear, or is being coached to say certain things - but the child’s needs, including the need for a relationship with both parents, should be paramount.
The bottom line? The majority of parents refusing to obey the law, preventing their children having access to the other parent and thumbing their nose at the system are not ‘coercive’ fathers, but mothers! Those complaints from the ‘Tom’s of the world about fathers being denied lawful access to their children have merit. This, of course, is the flip side of the Family Court numbers - we are supposed to believe that the Family Court is only women protecting themselves and their children from evil men, or said evil men abusing the system, but in reality a large proportion of the work is simply men fighting against being denied access to their kids even after they have gone through court and been judged that at least some access is appropriate. The Women’s Legal Service submission was a push-back against this, mainly an attempt to oppose the imposition of a costs penalty - that is, if I understand it correctly, if a parent has to go back to court due to non-compliance, and non-compliance was found to have occurred, the at-fault (recalcitrant) party has to pay costs. Surely this is a reasonable penalty? The Women’s Legal Service argue, “Fear of a cost risk places these women in a near impossible situation and the cost risk would be a real deterrent to act protectively.” Read that again - ‘protectively’ when there is no evidence of abuse is, well, an empty term is the politest way I can put it, so it says a costs penalty might deter women from preventing fathers seeing their kids, and they can’t have that! (And yes, they are the ones who gendered the language here, as with the removal of the Equal Parenting Responsibility presumption, when the chips are down they drop all pretence of ‘equity’ or legalese and state their desire for blatantly gendered outcomes quite baldly).
So what have we seen? At the behest of women’s groups, the new Labor government has removed the Equal Parenting Responsibility presumption despite it being a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, based around an the completely unsupportable idea that men were using it in significant numbers to manipulate the system, not prioritising the needs of the child, not effectively recognising that fathers’ groups’ claims of men being denied legal access are happening, and all to prevent, not substantiated violence against the children, but alleged conflict predominantly with the mother or wider family.
None of this is child centred.
Let’s look at the numbers from the child’s perspective.
Firstly we have the actual figures of who gets custody:
And as I said the first time I showed that image, it is just horrific. There is no way you can possibly call this child-centred, or child focussed. ‘Anti-male” would be the best term.
And this is an IMPROVEMENT on the 1995 outcomes that we saw earlier were, “said to have intended to create a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting”.
So after nearly 30 years of an assumption of shared parenting, and nearly 20 years after this was strengthened with an assumption of equal responsibility, that is the best we have gotten.
And the women’s groups said, “no, men have too much, we have to change it, for safety, really, take our word for it”. And the government agreed and withdrew the presumption because that was the most pressing issue.
Does that graph look like a system where the men are rorting it and getting away with it and the system is supporting them? Yes, the numbers show the men get better outcomes if they lawyer up and fight. But they still lose the majority of those cases - men get full custody 11% of the time, women 45% - so once again, that narrative never holds up. Never. And why wouldn’t they fight - and win - when the system as it defaults is so ridiculously stacked against them, and if they don’t fight they get outcomes like the graph shows?
Now, how much of this is about safety for the children? Let’s look at those numbers. Yes, much of this is just things I have written in earlier articles, but anyone new to this Substack might be wondering why I so casually declare women the main abusers of children, so I will repeat everything here.
Starting with THIS 2018 article from the Australian Institute of Criminology, Who Is Responsible For Child Maltreatment? it immediately informs us (on pg 1) that, “Knowledge about who is responsible for child maltreatment in Australia is limited. Australian data about persons responsible for maltreatment are rarely available, with most research focusing instead on the victim (Child Family Community Australia 2011; McDonald et al. 2011).” A focus on the victim can’t be faulted, but doesn’t help our cause. Pressing on, we learn on page 2 that, “Females are typically found to account for just over one-half of those responsible for maltreatment, and are more likely to be responsible for neglect (Department of Communities 2009; Sedlak et al. 2010; USHHS 2016).” It is immediately followed by the inevitable excuse: “this is not surprising given that females spend more time than males caring for children and are therefore more likely to be considered responsible for harms that occur.” On pg 5 we get a clearer number - women are responsible for 55.5% of child maltreatment. Men are certainly more responsible for much of the most serious sort of abuse like sexual assault: an earlier report (2014) from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Who Abuses Children? (LINK) which also starts by acknowledging, “Data on those who abuse children is limited in Australia”, gave figures of physical violence against children as 55% perpetrated by fathers / stepfathers vs nearly 26%, or half that, by mothers / stepmothers, based not on substantiations or prosecutions but on ABS Recorded Crime data of residential assaults reported to the police, which is certainly better than nothing. If we look at the National Children’s Commissioner’s 2015 Report into domestic violence - and she used her powers to get better information from the ABS and elsewhere - we see the following on pg 247:
This is an awkward graph - because of the different way violence against men and women is collected by the ABS (with a focus on ‘ending violence against women’, data about male victims is often an afterthought) we can’t compare 1-1 girls with boys here and have no matching boys graph. Also, it records first act of violence, so an adult might remember being smacked by one parent first as a child, but this doesn’t reflect the other parent then using them as a punching bag in later life. But it is better than nothing, and it confirms things I have said elsewhere:
When the children are young and vulnerable the mother is slightly more likely to commit physical violence against the child, consistent with my theory that women target the vulnerable
When they 4-9, more from the father / step father
The abuse from the mother reduces slightly at 10-11 (not sure why this is a separate category)
And then when they are teenagers, the violence continues to drop off from the mother as the child starts to attain a size where they (or an older sibling) can literally stop the mother from hurting them.
So we don’t see the 2-1 male/female perpetrators until the teenage years: otherwise, the numbers are much closer than the AIFS study suggested.
I also suspect that for many children, the ‘first’ encounter of violence from a man, if it comes later in childhood, is because this is when the mother has left the father and replaced him with a violent step-father: this is probably why teenage violence is starting to go up slightly from the ‘father’ even as it is going down from the mother. We’ll get into step-father statistics shortly. For many children, this is the reality of violence - it stops in the teenage years simply because they can stand up and make it stop, or they leave.
An aside - why is there so little data on who commits child abuse? Remember, today’s abused traumatised boy is tomorrow’s potential perpetrator of domestic violence, no-one seriously disputes that: THIS report from last year into links between child maltreatment and the criminal justice system says on pg 1, “international research has consistently found associations between child maltreatment and criminal offending, both in adolescence (multiple sources given) and in adulthood (multiple sources given). In the United States, a longitudinal study found individuals identified by the courts as victims in substantiated cases of child maltreatment were more likely than matched controls without substantiated maltreatment to be arrested in adolescence or adulthood (source given)”, then for Australian data says (pg 2), “An Australian birth cohort study linking substantiated child maltreatment data to delinquency measured at age 21 found that any maltreatment—and particularly physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect—was associated with a threefold increase in the odds of delinquency for males, but not for females (Abajobir et al. 2017). In sum, although the Australian evidence base is relatively small, it is generally consistent in finding associations between childhood maltreatment and offending.” So with all the millions of dollars that are poured into DV research, why hasn’t this sort of thing been conclusively investigated? Since so many things we need to know require investigation, but so many are covered up - you bet I am going to demonstrate that further down - I honestly have to conclude they don’t look into these things because they don’t want to know.
As someone who has been looking at this for years, I believe women are responsible for way more physical and emotional violence than the limited Australian data admits, and I say that because of the overseas numbers. The AIFS report linked above itself acknowledges that “a British retrospective prevalence study of 2,869 young adults aged 18-24 (May-Chahal & Cawson, 2005) found that mothers were more likely than fathers to be responsible for physical abuse (49% of incidents compared to 40%)”. If we have a quick look at US data, the most recent report, Child Maltreatment 2022, has the breakdown on physical violence roughly equal (51-49 to male perpetrators, pg 106). These DHHS Child Maltreatment reports each year dedicate table 5.3 (yes, that table every year going back to at least 2012) to a gender breakdown of child abuse perpetrators, and consistently show women as more likely to be perpetrators in the overwhelming majority of states (usually 35 to 40 of the 52 states and regions covered). Here is the latest graph from Statistica to show that in the US (with is much larger sample size and better research) abuse from mothers clearly outstrips that from fathers:
Finally, the most serious abuse of all, murder, is also around 52% female (AHRC report pg 105), based on Australian Institute of Criminology figures, and the most likely killer of children is the custodial mother (LINK)
The next question to ask is, where is this child abuse happening, that we can identify and prevent or provide support as needed?
I have previously referenced an Australian study, Family Structure and Child Maltreatment from 2012 that makes the point that single mother families represented 17% of society but twice that, 33%, of places where substantiations happen. This is not just proportionally higher - it is literally higher, in real numbers, than any other family type. The article of course made some excuses, such as pointing out (based on a Canadian study) that, “Sole-mothers tended to experience a greater number of parental personal and social problems—including substance abuse, mental health issues, low levels of education, and unemployment—than other parents. Much of the variation in risk by family structure in this study was explained by these differences.” Again, this is not unreasonable - the point is to understand why the abuse happens, not to demonise the minority of single mothers (let alone the majority) who are in the statistics, and all of these risk factors play a part. But they do not excuse the behaviour, nor even sufficiently explain it. The great economist and historian Thomas Sowell has made the point that two-parent families in African American neighbourhoods have the lowest levels of child abuse, crime etc, while single mother families have the highest - and these are obviously problems magnified by far higher prevalence in some African American communities - but this is despite both family types being in the same neighbourhoods and facing the same problems of poverty, crime and discrimination that everyone else in the neighbourhood does.
The report does show some research overseas that has found no discernable difference between two parent families and single mother (as well as reports in the UK and Canada that show the same), so is this 2012 report an outlier? When we go through the Child Protection Australia reports, it is pretty consistent that no, it is not: single mother households fairly consistently produce the highest levels of child abuse in real numbers and certainly as a proportion of family types across society.
CPA 2008-9 pg 17
CPA 2010-11 pg 9
CPA 2012-13 pg 25 - this year, two-parent families were 36% of substantiations, single female second with 28%
And that’s it. The numbers for 2014-15 were REMOVED - we can tell, because all the relevant terminology, “single parent - female”, “family type”, “family of residence” all appear in the glossary but do not appear in the text of the report. Nor any report going forward.
Why is this? Because apparently we don’t need to know that most child abuse in the country, again not just proportionally but in real terms, is happening in single mother households, at the hands of mothers, step-fathers or some combination of the two (or more rarely, unsupervised siblings).
Do you see why I suggest that they don’t do the research because they don’t want to know what it would show? They already cover up the existing information that doesn’t suit, and long-time readers will know this is something I have called out many times.
One more thing needs to be said. You may think the numbers are fairly close so it’s all much of a muchness - both men and women abuse children, it’s human nature. But there is one more set of figures to consider.
And this is the massively distorting effect that the presence of step-fathers have on the numbers.
Again, we don’t have nearly enough information on this. The first thing that comes to my mind is something I think I have mentioned before - a comment from the Monash Deakin filicide project (yes, I’m a fan, they do great work. Yes, it’s horrifying they even need to exist). I’ve mentioned several times their analysis that the numbers show that the most likely killer of a child is the custodial mother, but their most recent (2019) analysis “identified step-fathers as a high risk group and that they needed more investigation”. Because they kill disproportionately more children.
Killing, of course, is the least prevalent but worst act of violence. Moving up to the next least likely but also next worst, sexual violence, step-fathers again stand out. The CPA figures (HERE are the latest, 2021-22) tend to only discuss the child victims, not the perpetrators, alas, but THIS study from 2014, a small study profiling the parents who sexually abuse, found step-fathers outweighed natural fathers in that small group (n=172 from a 213 participants) 55% to 45%, despite the smaller number of step-fathers that are out there. There is an increasing amount of research that shows paedophiles (and yes, not all abuse is by paedophiles in the strictest sense, some is about opportunity, it’s all abuse…) will specifically target single mothers for relationships, be it romantic or friendship, knowing the day will always come when mum will need someone to watch the kids…
As with other issues around child abuse, perpetrator data for step-parents is hard to find other than for sexual abuse. Turning to 2021’s SAGE Handbook of Domestic Violence from the UK, section 3 (pp 9-18) discusses empirical data and research from various parts of the world, which has “found a significant relationship between stepparenting and child abuse”, including a longitudinal study of over 4300 8-9 year olds from Australia that found, “When not controlling for additional factors, an elevated risk of physical injury and multiple injury was found among children living in stepfamilies(23.2% and 4.6% respectively) compared with children living with both biological parents (16.1% and 2.2% respectively)” (pg 11) though no significant differences in hospitalisations. An analysis by Sedlak et al (2010) - whom I am sure I have referenced previously somewhere - “ revealed that children living with one biological parent and their partner, compared with those living with both biological parents, had more than 10 times the rate of abuse and nearly 8 times the rate of neglect, challenging earlier findings [from 1991]”.
And I want to add one more thing about step-fathers in particular and the dangerous situations that too many single mothers, too many women, place their children in: once again, the Women’s Legal Service appears to know this, and doesn’t want it held against them! In their submission, on page 17 they say:
Under the proposed expanded definitions, the disclosure obligations will mean that a party is required to disclose any and all family violence orders, child welfare orders and notifications to or investigations by State or Territory agencies about any and all members of a family or relative, even those who may have little or nothing to do with the child. These disclosure obligations are likely to be particularly cumbersome for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parties, but also other large families and will create a barrier in accessing the court. Additionally, the obligations will mean the adducing of evidence that may be largely irrelevant and may cause unnecessary delay in proceedings.
‘Expanded definition’ is expanded understanding of family - this is raised in relation to Indigenous families (you may remember me mentioning in previous articles that the term ‘Family violence” is used in Australia to cover the wider family unit found in indigenous communities as opposed to the ‘nuclear family’ of western households) but ties in with the earlier submission about expanding the idea of who might feel threatened or be a victim of violence from the non-custodial parent. The Women’s Legal Service wanted that to be expanded, but now they warn against the ‘unintended consequences’ of disclosure obligations: that it might show that the custodial parent is keeping the child in an unsafe environment, and this has to be downplayed! How is any of this child-centred? Of course it is important if a custodial parent is bringing violent people into the child’s life!
I have tied this to the high rates of violence among step-fathers - is this fair? If we look into other advocacy for single mothers we often see the complaint that the single mother is being “unfairly” penalised just for bringing a violent scumbag into the child’s orbit: for instance, THIS article from the ABC (yes, you’ve seen it before) and THIS one arguing that women are being “unjustly” portrayed as perpetrators for their role in violent relationships, and since much of this is focussed on Aboriginal violence, constantly painting the absurd picture of police taking every word Aboriginal men say as gospel truth and taking Aboriginal women away on nothing else than their fella’s say-so, as if the opposite - that the police have the WORST record with regard to the Aboriginal male - were not WRIT IN BLOOD ACROSS OUR HISTORY.
The reality, alas, is that - again, as I went to great lengths to investigate HERE - a person in a violent relationship can be the perpetrator one day and the victim the next, and if the violence continues long enough, then yes, the women will ultimately be the victim in the overwhelming majority of cases. And these are the majority of domestic violence scenarios.
Needless to say, when the media and the women’s advocates are all singing from the same songsheet, it points to a serious problem for women. The point here is not, who is right or wrong, or more wrong, or to blame - the point is, this is the sort of environment women raise their children in, and they want to be able to continue doing so, all while suggesting a father who once clashed with the mother-in-law or brother-in-law is somehow unfit to be around the child.
The statistics, though, are clear - children are safer in single father households than single mother.
And yet time and time again we are told that the mother has to feel safe, the people around the mother have to feel safe (never mind their own criminal behaviour), and if that means the child gets no access to their father, well, so be it.
And if a father fights this, fights for the child’s most basic right to access to a parent, by the very act of going to court the father is perpetrating ‘coercive control’ over the mother.
NONE OF THIS IS CHILD CENTRED!!!
Every time the Family Court, or the wider family legal system, preferences the mother and creates a single mother household, it does not reduce therefore risk for the child. The statistical probability is that it increases the risk of the child being abused, because the mother is the most likely abuser and the single mother household is the most likely place for abuse to happen. And since there is a good chance the mother will bring some sort of step-father into the child’s life, who has a disproportionate chance of being an abuser compared to the father or other male members of the family, by removing the father the system has likewise increased the risk the child will be abused by a male!
When you remove the father, child abuse does not go down, it goes up.
A child-focussed family court system would take that into account. Would be making things better, not worse. Would be child-centred and equality-focussed and just.
And then maybe we wouldn’t constantly be being told that the child protection system is in crisis. Because of course it is…