Today I met with Mark (name changed for privacy)
Mark hasn’t seen his daughter for 4 years.
Mark and his wife separated four years ago after his wife sort a FVO based on an accusation of physical violence that occurred 2 years prior to the date of report. Due to the 2 year period there was no evidence of the incident yet both the wife and child were listed as protected persons on the FVO.
Mark was not charged with any offence although the FVO was upheld with the child remaining as a protected person after a damaging DFFH report solely based on the mother’s characterisation of Mark being a violent father.
Mark denied any violence toward his child or mother to DFFH and advised DFFH that he was a loving, caring father of his then 4 year old daughter. This made no difference to the report produced by DFFH which completely accepted the mothers version of events in full.
both parents used public representation and agreed on final orders. Except the final orders end with Mark only seeing the child with “agreement” from the mother and only with supervised visits.
The orders fail to reach any progress after supervised visits, fail to state what type of supervision and are silent on any progression to unsupervised visits.
The orders are a complete failure and demonstrate the severe deficiencies in the family court system where two public lawyers and a judicial registrar could not create and identify a clear issue with the written outcome.
Mark and his daughter have missed half her lifetime of bonding that will forever damage her development and Marks mental health.
Mark who was a healthy middle aged father has suffered severe depression in the last year is now not working and the mother has not worked in the last eight years. The broken and permanently damaged family survive from welfare payments and the chances of Marks daughter being involved in drugs, alcohol, prison system increase by over 30% (based on data)