Protecting children from parents

At best, domestic violence is a serious failure in parenting by example. At worst it kills. If the cycle of violence is to be seriously challenged in Australia, then it must be seriously challenged at all levels of state, especially in the court where its core business is child abuse and domestic violence.

It is pertinent to note that in previous child abuse and deaths children were killed by a parent after having been through the Courts. In effect, what this means is that these children bore unimaginable human costs because the courts did not detect or pay heed to the warning flags. That murder and abuse occur in society is tragic enough; that it happen on federal or state orders is entirely unacceptable. In the neglect cases in Canberra and the Dalton case in 2007, the parents’ biological connection and entailing rights were privileged over the right of protection for the children.

The biological connection is so heavily emphasised that Federal and State Courts seem to have lost the ability to discern between dangers versus the benefits of “contact” with the biological parents that may or have actually harmed their partners and seriously neglected and harmed their own children. Inquires will be pointless and meaningless unless there are changes. A legislative change that mandates and prioritises the protection of children in cases where there is evidence of domestic violence or neglect in the family of origin is a start.

In the past, I predicted that there would be further abuse and deaths of children on court ordered parental care. Nothing changed after the Dalton case. Will anything change now after these latest deaths? If the present government’s intent to nationalise the child protection scheme does not address the judicial discretion that privileges biological ties over the evidence that children need protection, the death toll will continue.