My focus in the past has been on violence toward women. Today I am moving to cover all domestic violence. This is an awful story, a story of maternal brutality. In this case, The Australian newspaper contains a story in which a mother is alleged to have horribly battered her sixteen month old son. Read the story here.
Children are among the most vulnerable members of our society. Despite Australia's having various protection services, these services, existing at various levels of the system (state and commonwealth), sometimes fail to protect. One of the many problems we face is an unwillingness, on the part of police services and other state child protection services, to become involved where the Family Court is active. This seems to be the case regardless of law requiring parents who suspect abuse, to immediately report it. And again, where the Family Court is involved, parents sometimes avoid fulfilling the requirements of the law, lest the law consider the abuse 'not bad enough' and deem the reporting parent 'unfriendly'. This latter problem is the one that four year old Darcey Freeman died of, I refer to it as 'death by the friendly parent provision'.
Reading the material relating to proposed changes to the Family Law Act, one can see that this and other related issues are recognised as problematic. We hope to see them changed soon. In the meantime I'll watch with interest the way that the mother in the above story is dealt with. Our family law system accepts some claims of violence about male parents. Criminal law is unequivocal. Regardless of the parent, criminal assault is criminal assault. Perhaps we need family law to take the same view?
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