Hetty Johnston attacks Family Court judges The Australian- March 7, 2017 The founder of child advocacy ¬organisation Bravehearts says the group has been inundated with victims of the Family Court system wanting to tell their stories and join the push for a royal commission into the institution. The organisation’s mission is to prevent child sexual assault and Hetty Johnston said the court was failing to act on the information put before it by parents trying to protect their children. She said the first premise upon which judges based decisions was often an archaic, dangerous and wrong presumption that allegations were false. “This is despite the fact that we know one in five kids are sexually assaulted before they turn 18. But the courts won’t accept it, they see it as one parent trying to get an ¬advantage over the other parent by coaching their children to tell lies.” Chief Justice of the Family Court Diana Bryant said this was patently untrue and anyone who looked through all of the court’s cases would find there are decisions which go each way “as you would expect with an impartial judiciary”. She said the ultimate aim of the Family Court in parenting matters was to make orders which were in the best interests of children. She said there were a number of court process which require allegations of child abuse be made and she personally has made it very clear over a number of years in speaking to lawyers that allegations should always be raised. Ms Johnston respected the views of former Family Court judges on the system’s shortcomings, reported by The Australian yesterday, but said their views did not come from the grassroots. “If you look at this thing properly, in its entirety, they shouldn’t be having to decide those matters, that’s not their job and the experts that they’re using are not experts,” she said. “This system is so broken, it’s killing kids and that is not an overstatement.’’ Ms Johnston said independent children’s lawyers were routinely failing to meet the children or doing so only briefly. ICLs are ¬appointed by the Family Court to represent children’s interests. “These ICLs are lawyers, they’re not child protection ¬experts, they’re not child behavioural experts and yet they’re ¬giving recommendations to the court that the courts are accepting,” she said. Ms Johnston also criticised the cost of experts and said parents had reported to her cases of lawyers advising them not to bring -allegations before the court. “There’s a lot of good supervision centres, a lot of good judges and ICLs, a lot of good everything but there are too many bad ¬decisions.” There was a need for nation¬ally consistent guidelines for child protection, how children were ¬assessed and how courts treated those assessments “Only a royal commission can navigate the constitutional issues involved, because the Federal Court is a federal court, the states can’t tell the federal courts what to do and a parliamentary committee can’t tell the states what to do; not with any hope of any outcome,” Ms Johnson said. “The states are throwing their hands up and saying ‘we can’t cope’ and so these problems are landing in the lap of the federal courts and they’re having to do the best they can do.” Ms Johnston said the current court system went against everything Australia had learned about child sexual abuse.