[Editor’s note: An exclusive report from journalist and broadcaster, Amanda Gearing.]

by Amanda Gearing

On Monday, October 22, 2018, six years after parliament decided to hold a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Australia’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is going to make an apology to the many victims.

However, even while he is speaking, there is a small army of children who even today are living with someone of whom they are terrified.

Ten years ago, a child of seven left a phone message on my answering machine, delivering a plea so heart-breakingly desperate that it still resonates in my ears.

The girl, 7, was terrified to go to visit her father.

Sobbing uncontrollably, she told me she was too scared to tell her father she did not want to go to his house. This child-like so many others – can’t be named or identified because her father filed a Family Court action, effectively silencing her.

Since then, I have encountered many children who disclose sexual abuse by a parent.

I have also heard from protective mothers and fathers who were at their wits’ end trying to activate state and federal law enforcement and Child Protection systems that are designed and authorised to protect children, to actually protect them.

Having heard dozens of Family Law stories over the years, there are systemic failures that break the chain of protection around each child, leaving them not only vulnerable to sexual abuse but also helpless to escape it.

After years of reporting on the scourge of child sexual abuse in the churches and other institutions, I found it was difficult to imagine something worse than the betrayal of the innocence of a child by an adult who claimed to personify the love of God.

Yet what I was seeing was infinitely worse.

These children could not escape even if they had a protective parent.

In the case of a church or institutional abuse, if the victim did report to a parent, the parent could protect the child.

In the case of abuse in the family, if the victim reports to a parent and the couple have a Family Court case on foot, the child is most likely to end up being ordered to visit or live with the person they say is abusing them.

In 21st century Australia, this to which our children are being subjected is a national disgrace.

Protective parents typically present as individuals who at first are cautious because they suspect they must be crazy.

They routinely report that they were in a domestic violence relationship; stayed because they were pregnant; the partner left and years later applied for access; the child disclosed abuse during contact visits; the parent-reported to authorities; the authorities believed the child; the Family Court’s ‘experts’ did not believe the child and flipped the case with court ‘experts’ then blaming the protective parent for ‘coaching’ the child; accusing the parent of ‘emotional abuse’; banning them from taking their child to a doctor or hospital or even police.

Frantic, they Google sexual abuse, find an archived article and phone in desperation.

Understandably flabbergasted that the Family Law system manages to quickly turn facts into fictions and fictions into facts, they cautiously admit they feel they are going crazy.

The sanity-shattering process in which the court asserts that it is better for a child to be in a relationship with their abusive parent than protected from them is completely out of step with community expectations.

The protective parents – mostly, but not exclusively, women – who have been subjected to years of being gaslighted, bashed or raped cannot hand their child to someone they know is capable of violence and sexual abuse.

What chance will a child have to protect themselves against similar treatment?

After hearing many similar stories, I am able to assure these parents that they are not crazy – it’s the system that is crazy.

Protective parents who have never broken a law, let alone attracted a speeding fine, suddenly find themselves contemplating breaking the law in order to protect their children.

Children like the little girl above.

The child’s mother, in that case, was ordered by the court to subject her child to fortnightly visits to a man she did not want to see and of whom she was terrified. This mother was one of the few lucky ones who won custody of her child, after spending hundreds of thousands of borrowed dollars on legal advice in a court battle. Luckily for her, the child did not disclose the abuse to her mother. She disclosed to her grandmother.

This meant that the usual accusations of ‘coaching’ could not be levelled at the mother.

The mother was ordered by the court not to allow her child to speak to anyone who believed her allegations of sexual assault: her family doctor, a child psychologist and even the child protection organisation Bravehearts.

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison stands to apologise to victims of institutional abuse on Monday, spare a thought for many children who are living today with someone of whom they are terrified.

I hope the new PM will have relevant findings of the ($500million-dollar) Royal Commission transplanted into the current war-field of child sexual abuse – the Family Law system.

Below, the message on my answering machine:

https://gumshoenews.com/2018/10/15/australias-family-law-system-broken/