This is what my daughter got... becuase they wanted to hurt me.

"No face to face or telephone Contact - no written contact save a card - to be vetted by the mother at Christmas or on birthdays ...despite their being no issues of abuse or violence. And you'd been told it didn't happen!

Will you do what you can to stop this from going on? - as I understand it does all too frequently.

Will you work to change the Laws to protect children from what has been done to my daughter?

After six years of legal efforts to maintain the weekend fortnight regime minimum the FC allowed my daughter to be with me, I have just received my second set of 'Final Orders' (the first ones were breached by my ex-partner and therefore discarded).

The final 'Final Orders' stipulate no face to face or telephone contact.

The Reasons For this Judgement were essentially, that:

i) any contact I might have with my daughter could cause her physiological damage; and

ii) any contact between my daughter and I would be too distressing for my ex-partner.

Justice Carter (the Judge) determined that I was argumentative and uncooperative and that this was supported by the fact that I had arguments with the psychiatrist and psychologist (no attention was given to the arguments - just that I was argumentative), both of whom maintained that the problem was that I wouldn't listen. Both concluded that I therefore must behave in the same manner with my daughter (despite reams of evidence to the contrary).

Justice Carter also pointed to the fact that I had made numerous complaints about lack of co-operation, bias and misrepresentations of the Child Representative and the excessive use of psychiatry and psychology to obtain legal objectives (which finally ended in my daughter breaking down in the psychologist's office).

All my complaints to all relevant official government and legal bodies have been officially dismissed despite the Child Representative's misrepresentation being evidenced by court transcript.

Sexual abuse allegations (two of them were made).
My daughter was forced to endure months of therapy and counselling, some of it to learn "protective behaviour". The abuse allegations were found to be without basis although it was deemed my discussions with my then three year old daughter about washing her private bits were deemed to be inappropriate. There was no recognition of the distress the allegations caused my daughter or I, or how they aligned the school teachers and DHS staff against me (other than to suggest I was paranoid).

I have been 'restrained' from writing or speaking to my ex-partner or any involvement in affairs relating to my daughter's medical issues or schooling unless the doctor(s) and/or teacher(s) are happy to provide relevant information.

I have been restrained from approaching my daughter's house or school.

I have been restrained from approaching or communicating with the Child Representative whose on-going Legal Aid funding has been assured by Court Order (Legal Aid has funded him for about four years now).

I am allowed to send a card and a present on my daughter's birthday (but these are to be vetted and rejected by my ex if she finds them 'inappropriate").

Cause the child distress, then use this distress to cause more
The terrible truth of the divorce industry is that a father can always be excluded from his child's life if the mother is wealthy or determined enough.

Why? Because the child finds themselves in the middle of the war and invariably become intensely distressed depressed and anxious. This in turn is used to argue that the father is the cause of the distress and the father must be removed to protect the child from ongoing distress. This is what happened in my case. I suspect it happens in every difficult case. Its the Family Court's "lay down masser". My daughter's complaints about what was being done to her, were blamed on me "involving her in the dispute" (how else would she have any idea of what is going on around her !!).

Can you do anything to stop this practice?

Most of these issues, including false allegations of child abuse arise as a consequence of the mutually exclusive policies and processes of the FCA. Once women are prevented from unilaterally excluding their children's fathers, once shared parenting has become the norm, mothers will not be inclined to make these allegations. There'll be no need.

Sexual abuse allegation are mostly the consequence of mothers becoming desperate. Desperate to regain the affections of children who have themselves become desperate and distressed about the way the mother treats their father and the unsatisfactory explanations they receive. Mothers that have been advised and assisted by everybody they have encountered to exclude the father. Unfortunately father exclusion is sold to them as both a solution and an means of empowerment. Not only by lawyers but by social workers and the DHS (I have no doubt that the new Family Relationship Centres will continue the policy)

Again I say this is the consequence of an abusive, mental and absurdly mutually exclusive system. An industry that relies on creating distress for children to win the exclusion of one of their parents. With shared parenting protected by law sexual abuse allegations would seldom occur.

THE SOLUTION

The solution to this nightmare and the awful harm it does to our precious children is amazingly simple. It’s what the vast majority of Australians have been telling the Government for years. Recent media polls on the issue of shared parenting again showed that the overwhelming majority of Australian - about 90% - want the carnage and abuse to stop.

These polls also show that this in not, as some powerful interest groups maintain - a gender issue. Australian men and women want the Family Court to desist from denying children the love care and guidance of their fathers.

The solution is simply to legislate to outlaw the removal of one of a child's parent by the other.

If the father is not arbitrarily, summarily removed, in the vast majority of cases the fight never starts in the first place. There is no fight because their is no excluded parent. THE ISSUE IS REMOVED. The problem fixed.

The method for resolution of this problem is also simple. The following MUST become written into the law to protect our children from the suffering so many of them are enduring.

"A presumption of equal parenting time, as a starting point, rebuttable only if child abuse can be substantiated, or if mutual parental agreement is reached for an alternate arrangement".

If anybody tells you that the solution can not be simple, that "one size can't fit all" - ask them why they would ever want to put a child though the living hell of having their father vilified and removed from their lives. Ask them what is complicated about NOT DOING THIS.

Yours faithfully,
SH
+61(0)3 5973 6933