Family Court system - more blood on your hands

David Cass told mother they’re asleep forever as he smothered two children
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3531002/David-Cass-told-mother-theyre-asleep-forever-as-he-smothered-two-children.html

As soon as I saw the headline I knew what the story was about. The father had been denied equal time with his children, and had murdered them and committed suicide.

Sure enough, when I went to the article, it was a case of family separation, and the father had been upset because he didn’t get to see his children enough.

Note the censorship here. It is about EQUAL TIME. Why not give us the full facts?

The Family Court system in the UK, throughout Europe, in Canada, the US and Australia and New Zealand etc has blood on its hands. Had their Family Law and Policy not been blatantly skewed against fathers, many childrens’ lives would have been saved. And they say they are only interested in the best interests of children? What a farce.

Not to mention the number of fathers and mothers that have also suicided or been murdered in Family Court-driven murder-suicides.

The coroner says "An event of this nature is extraordinarily rare. Certainly I have not had to deal with a similar tragedy in the 15 years I have held this particular role”.

Well it may have been extremely rare for the coroner, but ‘extremely rare’ is a relative term. Unfortunately murder-suicides are all too common (perhaps 100-500 per year in the OECD countries overall).

And they are often not reported in the media or under-reported (the story omits the key facts such as that the murder-suicide followed a separation and a biased ruling by the Family Court). In Australia there are media laws preventing the media from discussing cases in the Family Court.

Family Courts - more blood on your hands!

Get out of the business of deciding on 40:60, 30:70, 33:67, 29:71 time between the parents – very arbitrary rulings by judges who need to keep themselves in business, not to mention protecting a very lucrative and immoral Family Law industry.

Use Family Relationship Centres and Social Workers to resolve disputes where they are backed up by law – a Presumption of Equal Parenting Time.

De-escalate the Family Court system and escalate Family Relationship Centres and unbiased Child Protection Services. Help parents to be good parents. Teach parents that Parental Alienation (eg denigrating the other parent and acting uncooperatively) constitutes serious harm to the mental and emotional wellbeing of children.

The Family Court of Australia says that if the parents cannot cooperate, then the mother must have majority time. Not only does this give incentive for the mother to be uncooperative (and make false or highly exaggerated accusations etc), it does not deal with the main issue of parents acting inappropriately and in a way which harms children.

Occasionally the Family Court will act on extreme cases of parental alienation by reducing the time the offending parent has with the children. This shows that they really do not understand the issue because by restricting time you are punishing the children. What is required is a raft of graded responses:

- warning
- course in good parenting at Family Relationship Centres
- Community Service
- fines
- daytime jail (when not looking after children)

The feminist lobby will use incidents like this as evidence that men are intrinsically violent and that instigating a Presumption of Equal Parenting in Family Law will expose children to more violence.

But the feminist lobby is a hypocritical opportunist movement interested in enhancing the power of women, irrespective of its original philosophy of gender equity.

A Presumption of Equal Parenting will not expose children to more violence - quite the contrary.

If there are accusations or suspicions of child abuse, perpetrated by men or women (and our society mistakenly believes women do not commit child abuse, or perhaps only extremely rarely), they need to investigated thoroughly irrespective of whether parents are together or separated.

Where false accusations have occurred and can be shown to be deliberately misleading, then the perpetrator needs to be punished in some way because the investigations draw resources away from real incidences of child abuse - not to mention unnecessary harm to the accused victim.

In the meantime, the Family Court can reflect on the three deaths it has indirectly caused and the suffering of the mother and other family members for years to come.

*

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3531002/David-Cass-told-mother-theyre-asleep-forever-as-he-smothered-two-children.html


David Cass told mother 'they're asleep forever' as he smothered two children
David Cass told the mother of his two children "they're asleep forever" in a phone call just moments after he had smothered them, an inquest has heard.


Cass, 33, killed his daughters Ellie, three, and 14-month-old Isobelle in his caravan in the grounds of the garage where he worked in Southampton, Hants, in September this year.

Just after carrying out the killings, he called his mother Lynn and then the girls' mother and his estranged girlfriend, Kerrie Hughes, 20, to say what he had done.

He then went into a building at Paynes Road Car Sales and hanged himself on September 21 this year.

Southampton Coroner Keith Wiseman recorded verdicts that both girls were unlawfully killed and Mr Cass had committed suicide.

Ms Hughes and her family attended the hearing at Southampton Coroner's Court and left without comment.

The court heard that Mr Cass and Ms Hughes had split in August this year and Mr Cass had been given weekend access to look after the girls, plus time during the week.

But in the days before the killings, Mr Cass grew angry he was not seeing the girls enough and had threatened to kill himself, but never mentioned harming the children.

He told work colleagues he was quitting the garage and he had a plan and they described him as subdued, the hearing was told.

He had also said he wanted to move back into the rented family home, which had caused anxiety with Ms Hughes.

The hearing was told Mr Cass called his mother at 6.22pm and she initially asked if he had taken Ellie and Isobelle back to their home in Fairoak, Hants.

Reading from a statement, Detective Sergeant Glyn White said Mr Cass replied: "No I cannot allow the children to live in the conditions they have to live in. The children have gone to sleep and so am I. I love you Mum."

Just minutes later at 6.26pm he called Ms Hughes and Mr White said Mr Cass told her: "They're asleep."

She replied: "What do you mean asleep? Where are they?"

Mr Cass said: "They're asleep forever."

Ms Hughes: "What do you mean?"

Mr Cass: "Just remember I will always love you." And he put the phone down.

Mr White said a distraught Ms Hughes could not remember everything that was said and told a neighbour, Valerie Fraser, telling her Mr Cass could not live without the children. He had smothered them and he was about to hang himself.

Police eventually went to the garage and broke into the caravan to find the two girls dead on a bed.

Mr Cass was found later hanging in the building.

Post-mortem examinations concluded the two girls had died from smothering and Mr Cass from hanging.

The hearing was told the split between the Mr Cass and his girlfriend had been protracted with both sides calling the police and social services.

Ms Hughes had accused Mr Cass of trying to run her over in 2007 and Mr Cass had called the police over the theft of money.

He also called social services to complain about the state of the house the girls lived in.

In the days before the deaths, social worker Susan Poole had spoken to both parents and described both as being calm and thoughtful. Ms Hughes described her estranged boyfriend as a good father, she told the court.

Mrs Poole described the situation as an ordinary contact with a young family under stress and that she was not anxious about the children.

Giving the verdicts, Mr Wiseman said: "There is no indication or likelihood of harm coming to these children until literally the event itself.

"An event of this nature is extraordinarily rare. Certainly I have not had to deal with a similar tragedy in the 15 years I have held this particular role.

"This was something totally out of the blue. It's impossible to say whether planning lasted more than moments or even seconds.

"No one has provided any information or evidence that suggested this event could have been anticipated in any way at all."

Letter to The Age 03 May 2007

Please see my Letter to the Editor of The Age newspaper today, as well as the article it refers to below it.

Vital piece of information
Your article "Mother pleads for return of missing children" (02 May 2007) fails to include a vital piece of information: Did the relationship between the parents breakdown in Brisbane, or the Blue Mountains / Sydney, (or elsewhere)? Crises like these arise when the Family Court allows the Mum to move away from the Dad, which thankfully is happening less frequently but is still a serious problem.

They also arise because the Federal Government continues to shy away from implementing a Presumption of Equal Parenting Time in the Family Court system.

Geoff Holland
Cairns, Qld

___________________________

Mother pleads for return of missing children
The Age May 2, 2007

PHILIPPA Yelland knew something was wrong when her three children weren't waiting at the school gate as usual on a Monday afternoon in March. And when told the children hadn't turned up at the Eagle Junction State School in Brisbane that day, Ms Yelland knew: "Oh my God, he hasn't returned them."

Bokkie, 10, Matilda, 9, and Barney, 7, had spent the weekend with their father, Murray Robertson, at his home in the Blue Mountains town of Hazelbrook. Under arrangements put in place after Ms Yelland and Mr Robertson separated, the children visited their father every third and sixth weekend.

Ms Yelland has not seen or spoken to her children since she dropped them off at school on March 16 before that scheduled weekend with their father. Yesterday, the distraught mother made a plea for help in finding her children, who are thought to still be with Mr Robertson.

Ms Yelland implored her ex-husband: "Please return the children safely to me. Everyone misses them." Asked what message she wanted to send to her children, she said: "I love them very much and I look forward to them coming home."

Ms Yelland, a freelance journalist, has been unable to contact her ex-husband, who has had his mobile phone switched off since the weekend the children went missing. "They've disappeared, literally," she said.
Ms Yelland said she yearned for her children and the day they return home. "I just miss them. Their joyousness, their unending enthusiasm. They are the most glorious children. The place is dead without them."

For now she takes comfort from prayer. "I believe God will keep them safe," she said. "I just pray they will be brought home safely. What else can you do?"

She has kept busy helping family and friends with chores. "There is a great benefit in constant activity," she said.

Although their marriage ended acrimoniously in divorce 18 months ago, Ms Yelland said she had no inkling her former husband would run off with the children. "This was out of the blue, completely."

The Family Court of Australia has authorised the Australian Federal Police, state and territory police forces and the marshal of the court to locate the Robertson children. It has allowed the names of the children and their father to be publicised in an effort to find them.

Family Court reforms

An article from the Age and my letter to the editor, which to my knowledge was not published. Do editors feel they have a community responsibility to publish the least number of letters concerning Equal Parenting and reform of the Family Court issues ?


The Age 26 April 2007

Taking some of the pain out of family breakdowns

THE Family Court has had a short but tumultuous history. Since its inception as part of the 1975 Family Law Act — initiated by Labor attorney-general Lionel Murphy with the aim of allowing failed marriages to end with dignity and minimum expense — the court has indeed simplified divorce proceedings, but it has also witnessed battles between parents, lawyers and judges, often with tragic consequences.

It has been described, with reason, as the most dangerous and violent court in the country. The most extreme clashes have resulted in death and serious injury. In the 1980s, Family Court judge David Opas was shot dead when he answered his doorbell; Pearl Watson, the wife of a second judge, died when a bomb exploded on her doorstep; and Judge Richard Gee was hurt in a bombing. Indeed, there have been numerous cases resulting in death or injury in violent episodes outside family courts around Australia.

While these incidents are tragic and deplorable, it is not surprising that the personal and financial devastation that so often follows the dissolution of a marriage has had such consequences — especially when drawn-out legal negotiations have left numerous fathers feeling abandoned by the courts and mothers struggling to raise their children with inadequate support from their former partners. But in recent months the Family Court has undergone radical changes in its processes and the results have been encouraging. As The Age reports today, the spirit of the Murphy reforms may finally have been embraced.

The formality of a trial, dominated by lawyers whose approach often exacerbated tensions between the parties, has been replaced by a conference in which the judge has a conversation with the parents and allows each to speak directly of his or her experiences, attitudes to parenting and hopes for the future. Even its straightforward title — the less adversarial trial — indicates the fact that the traditional British "adversarial" system has been replaced with a European-style inquisitorial system in which the laws of evidence are less stringent. The focus of the judge's inquiry is on the children and the arrangements that will best meet their needs.

This process is the subject of Finding a Better Way, a report to be launched tomorrow by Family Court Chief Justice Diana Bryant. Written by La Trobe University academic Jennifer McIntosh, it is a study of the effects of the process on children and parents who participated in trials of the new system in 2004 and 2005. The results are encouraging. Children whose parents were divorced under the new system emerged happier than children whose cases were processed in the traditional way; their parents argued less and were more likely to have co-operative arrangements for sharing the children than other parents. Dr McIntosh concluded that the new system "demonstrated a greater capacity to respond to and safeguard the psychological vulnerabilities of the co-parental relationship, post separations than the traditional, adversarial process". In general, parents have also been positive about the new approach: whereas 70 per cent of parents involved in the previous approach felt the process had a negative effect on them as parents, just 28 per cent of those in the new process felt this way.

This does not mean an end to disputes about custody and child support — there remains much to be done to ensure that all parents meet their responsibilities in these matters — but the Family Court has taken a huge step towards civilising what was too often a demeaning process for all involved. The great strength of the new system is that for the first time the law insists that the interests of the child be paramount and that both parents have, as far as possible, equal rights and responsibilities. The system is not perfect — for example, there are legitimate concerns about ditching the rules of evidence (particularly the abolition of the ban on hearsay) — but with goodwill, strong support systems and careful adjudication, children will be the real beneficiaries of these changes. As one QC said: "Someone has to keep an eye out for the interests of the child."

_____________________________________________

The Age Letters to the Editor 26 Apr 2007

Judges must also get out of the way

Finally ! It has taken 30 years for the Family Court system to acknowledge what Dads have been arguing all along - that their adversarial system is grossly inappropriate ("Taking some of the pain..." 26 Apr 07). In fact, by amplifying conflict they have been damaging children and acting contrary to the child's best interests.

However, they still don’t get it ! While the Family Court now admits that trials have been “dominated by lawyers whose approach often exacerbated tensions between the parties”, they still do not see that judges also need to get out of the way.

The new Family Relationship Centres are the way to go, but until they are mandatory, until they have authority, transparency and accountability, and until they are based on a Presumption of Equal Parenting Time, they are not going to be able to keep separating partners out of court.

A judge has no right to decide how much access a child has to each parent when the parents are together. Assuming there is no child abuse - by far the majority of cases - what gives judges the right to make arbitrary judgments on access just because the parents have separated ?

Geoff Holland
Cairns, Qld