TWO weeks ago a
slightly built Sydney teenager took on the Family Court - and won. It
didn't make headlines. It didn't even make it to a court room. There was no
hearing, no judge, no lawyers. Just a young girl with a strong moral compass
who had the courage to say "enough is enough."
At 14, this girl
made the brave call to stand up to her abusive father and defy the parenting
agreement that required her to spend nearly 50 per cent of her time with him.
For nine years, she and her two younger sisters experienced a life of
fear, constant upheaval and unrelenting cruelty at the mercy of their father.
For nine years they had to stand by and watch their father verbally abuse,
manipulate, threaten and beat my close friend, their mother. And because their
narcissistic tyrant of a father did not physically harm his children, a
court-ordered family report - beyond all logic and comprehension - recommended
a 50-50 care arrangement when his wife finally found the strength to divorce
him.
Tragically, two
Queensland women and a six-year-old girl died two weeks ago allegedly as a
result of domestic violence. Amid the many emotive debates and necessary calls
for action, I would like to shine a spotlight on a corner of our legal system
that lets down hundreds of Australian women each year. A justice system in
which many abused women will never leave their dangerous partners while ever
there's a risk the Family Court will enforce without compassion or commonsense
its idealised notion of shared parenting.
Introduced under
the Howard Government in 2006, the shared parenting laws were designed to hand
a better deal to divorced dads who were fed up with paying to raise their
children but only having access to them every second weekend. I'm divorced with
two children and remarried to a man who also has two kids. I thoroughly endorse
the concept of both parents having equal and every opportunity to be physically
and emotionally involved in their children's lives. I wholeheartedly advocate
for more mutually agreeable, flexible arrangements to supersede rigid orders
that see dads collecting their kids at 9am every second Saturday from a
McDonald's car park and returning them by 5pm the following day. And at the
risk of being lambasted, shame on women who laud these prescriptive
arrangements over decent blokes who are trying to do the right thing. But as
with every well-intended piece of legislation, there are unintended
consequences.
For a range of
reasons - geography, logistics, employment, finances, emotional and physical
health - it's not always possible for children of divorce to spend equal time
with both parents. I believe most fair and reasonable separated parents
comprehend this. The problem is fairness is scarce when emotions run high
and wounds from broken marriages are still raw.
But what most Australians
would fail to fathom is how a man with an AVO against him and witness accounts
detailing a long history of horrendous torment against his wife, would be able
to convince the Family Court he should have equal care of his three daughters,
at the time aged 12, 10 and 7. But he did. Even more alarming is that according
to men's rights group Fathers4Equality only 15 per cent of fathers have been
able to secure shared parenting arrangements since the laws came into effect.
How my friend's former husband is among that minority beggars belief.
As for many women
in her situation, my friend lacked hard proof. Her former husband was smart
enough not to wallop her in the face. She's an international flight attendant -
a black-eye or other visible wound would have prompted too many questions.
Instead, he punched her in the head so her brunette hair could hide the
bruising. Like most domestic violence situations, the episodes were explosive
and unpredictable. He threw hot coffee in her face, smashed things regularly
and trashed her verbally and maliciously at the slightest interruption to his
warped take on life. He once dragged her viciously by the hair to point out a
tiny smudge on a wall she'd just painted. She was locked out of the house for
an entire night and he would threaten regularly that if she ever left, he would
ensure she lost the house and the kids. He even cooked up a scheme to
jeopardise her job, threatening to phone the airline she worked for to tell
them she mumbled in her sleep about blowing up planes. And nearly all of this
torment and violence played out in front of their three young girls, who were
forced by their enraged father at one point to tell their mother they didn't
want to live with her.
What's most
difficult for women in these situations to prove is the unrelenting cruelty:
emotional isolation; blackmail; forced sex; vile verbal abuse, fear of
triggering the next violent episode; upended tables when dinner isn't up to
scratch; threats that if they leave they will lose everything, including the
kids.
Further
complicating and hampering my friend's case when it finally made it to court
was the fact she still lived under the same roof as her abuser. At the time,
myself and a circle of close friends she had begun to confide in told her she
was mad. We implored her to get the hell out. It would only harm her case, we
said. Sadly, in the end, we were right. The judge ruling on the final financial
settlement said my friend's plight couldn't have been that bad or else she
wouldn't have stayed.
But it's easy for
those of us living on the outside of these hellish relationships to offer
seemingly sage advice. My friend stayed because she feared if she left and
pursued divorce, the Family Court would invoke the shared parenting laws,
leaving her even more helpless to shield her children from their father's
abuse. Ultimately, her worst fears were realised when the family report
recommended the 50-50 care split. She could have pursued in court a
different parenting order but she knew her daughters were too afraid to speak
out, especially when they knew both parents would review any family report, and
the report would likely gazump her case. Defeated emotionally and financially,
she reluctantly agreed to the current arrangement, which essentially requires
her daughters to spend nearly 50 per cent of their time with an abusive
dad.
Which brings us
back to our brave teen who has decided she won't abide by this arrangement any
more. Last month, when my friend was preparing for an international shift, her
eldest daughter declared she would no longer be forced to live a significant
part of her life with her father. Having experienced his abusive tendencies
shifting towards her, she mustered wisdom and social intelligence beyond her
years and arranged for a trusted male friend to attend a meeting between her
and her dad. She intended to let her father know that when her mother travelled
for work she would now be staying at her uncle's instead. Confronted and
wrong-footed by a situation he couldn't totally control, her father was a
no-show. He huffed and puffed and threatened to call the police to report his
daughter a runaway, but she was unmoved. And remains steadfastly so.
There is much more
to be said and written about my friend's situation and the failings of the
system. Court-appointed child psychologists who either wouldn't or couldn't ask
direct questions; magistrates and pastors who allowed themselves to be conned
by a mentally unstable, unemployed man who promoted himself as the ultimate stay-home
dad; barristers who treated the case like pass-the-parcel and failed to read or
act on carefully and lawfully prepared affidavits; and police who couldn't act
without more proof.
Until the system
starts to investigate thoroughly claims and threats of family violence and
advocates for the protection of women and children, many women in my friend's
situation will choose to take their chances with a fist than risk a court
ruling that hands their children over to abusers. Perhaps our hope lies in the impacted
children, who will eventually grow up and maybe, just maybe, be courageous
enough to take a stand.
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