It was the South Australian police who took out an intervention order to protect *Mia and her son after her partner grabbed the sleeping boy and shoved her across the room.
They were also involved when the father broke that order by assaulting her, then sped off with the then one-year-old in the car and threatened to drive into a tree.
So, when the Federal Circuit and Family Court (FCFC) ordered the boy be put into his father’s care, Mia was devastated.
“They didn’t care about any of it and I don’t understand why,” she said.
In a separate case in NSW, *Maddie’s parents have been arguing in various courts about who should care for her, ever since she was a baby. She’s now 14.
Over the course of at least three parenting matters, her mother has repeatedly told the FCFC her father’s hostile and aggressive behaviour was a risk to Maddie.
Both parents have applied for violence orders from their state court.
The police even sought orders to protect Maddie from her father. But in its most recent ruling, the FCFC ordered Maddie into his care.
“It’s just madness,”
Maddie’s mother *Keryn said.
Keryn — who was Maddie’s primary carer for 12 years — now speaks to her over the phone once a week for an hour and has some contact during school holidays.
Every year, thousands of cases traverse multiple jurisdictions between state family violence legislation and federal legislation. (ABC News)
Across the country cases like Mia’s and Maddie’s are playing out on a regular basis — bouncing between jurisdictions and agencies.
Katherine Berney of the National Women’s Safety Alliance said these experiences are not unique.
She said state courts often put in place protection orders, which are then lifted by the family court — a system operating in the federal jurisdiction.
That’s something she said she’s heard from a lot of the women’s safety organisations she works with around the country.
‘Confusing, costly and re-traumatising’
Last week, the government released a report into making the family law system safer and fairer for people needing the protection of family violence orders.
It made 11 recommendations and noted that women leaving abusive relationships often had to navigate two court systems.
State and territory courts have the power to protect victim-survivors with family violence orders, but the FCFC is a federal court that resolves parenting and property matters after a relationship breaks down.
“This dual system can be time consuming, confusing, costly and re-traumatising for victim-survivors, and can put them at risk and anchor them to their abusers,” the report said.
A spokesperson for the Federal Circuit and Family Court said the court welcomed the recommendations of the inquiry.
Meaghan Bradshaw, chair of the Women’s Legal Service Australia Family Law and Domestic and Family Violence Committee, has seen that up close.
She said victim-survivors can have a protection order put in place by a state court forbidding the other parent from contacting them, only to have the family court make a parenting order instructing communication between the parties.
“What we see on the ground for victim-survivors is real confusion in terms of navigating these systems and how they work together or don’t work together,”
she said.
The inquiry also noted that once a violence order was obtained through a state court, the family law court could override it and put victim-survivors at risk by granting perpetrators access to children.
“They are different orders with different purposes,” Ms Bradshaw said.
She said the purpose of a domestic violence order was to protect the named parties from violence, whereas federal law required the family court to consider the best interests of the child when making parenting orders.
The inquiry also recommended that children themselves could take out restraining orders against a parent as an extra layer of protection.
Amanda Sillars, CEO of the Eeny Meeny Miney Mo Foundation, which supports families experiencing coercive control and alienation, said that would be dangerous.
“[It] creates a dangerous loophole for manipulation, where a coercive parent can pressure a child into legally severing ties with the other parent,” she said.
“We already see adults misusing restraining orders to control, punish, or alienate, wasting valuable court time and financial resources that should be reserved for genuine cases of harm.“
To address the issue of conflicting orders between jurisdictions the committee recommended the state courts — who make family violence orders — also be given the power to amend family court orders to protect victim-survivors and their children.
Similarly, the inquiry recommended the FCFC be able to implement “Personal Protection Injunctions” (PPI) for victim-survivors when making parenting orders.
However, the committee noted evidence suggesting “PPIs are limited in their effectiveness and are rarely acted upon by police”.
A series of inquires over decades
The inquiry is the latest in a string of reviews into family violence and the family court which have spanned decades.
That string of inquiries is so lengthy, the committee noted in its report that “inquiry fatigue” existed amongst those working in the sector.
Keryn said she’d lost hope that repeated legislative changes and amendments to the law would make any difference for victim-survivors.
“It doesn’t really seem to matter in the family court what laws exist to protect women and children from abuse,” she said.
“It seems to me, in my 14 years of family court litigation, that family court judges will consistently use their ‘discretionary’ rights to interpret those laws in ways which maintain the status quo.”
A spokesperson for the FCFC said the court welcomed the inquiry’s recommendations.
“The [FCFC] note the report’s acknowledgement that additional funding and resourcing must also be considered if the recommendations are to be implemented,” the spokesperson said.
Last year, the government amended the Family Law Act to focus on six factors centred around the best interests of the child when making parenting orders including the safety of the child and the child’s views.
*Names have been changed for legal reasons
