NZ: Home Truths; Family Court a Disgrace
Home Truths
By Greg Knight
The Weekend Sun, Tauranga, Bay Of Plenty, New Zealand
27 February 2004 Issue: 177
Family Court a Disgrace
The Family Court is probably one of the most contentious government departments in this country. For nearly 30 years the New Zealand public have believed that we have had a fair and equitable system where parents can
go to the Family Court to sort out custodial arrangements when they separate, and that they can have a Judge decide what is in the ???best interests of the child???.
When talking to people who have been thru the Family Court, many would tell you that this couldn???t be further from the truth. As the speaker of the West Australian Parliament Peter Lewis has said, the Family Court is ???sexist, abusive, biased, crook and criminal???.
Act???s social welfare spokeswomen Dr Muriel Newman agrees with this and has said ???our Family Court system is a disaster zone: it is unfair and unjust, its costs are excessive, the process takes far to long, it fails to uphold court orders, it perpetuates false allegations, it is totally biased against fathers and, in alienating fathers and grandparents, it is damaging to children.???
Although many people are unaware of what goes on within the Family Court, (it is illegal to speak about what goes on in this Court) I believe that the mistakes of the Family Court experiment are catching up with us. There is no doubt in my mind that many families have suffered by this unjust and biased Court, particularly fathers and children. What we are seeing now is the tragic effects of this failed experiment all through our community.
Without fathers
A devastating picture of life for young New Zealanders has been disclosed in an official report, showing New Zealand teens lead the world in suicides, crime and drugs. It has been shown that growing up without a father is a
more reliable predictor of criminal activity than race, enjoinment or poverty. The Police Association has just this year complained that ???children aged 10 to 16 are responsible for almost one in four crimes committed in New Zealand.
Many criminal Court Judges are also starting to see and understand the devastating effects of the Family Court separating fathers from Children. As youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft has claimed, ninety percent of youth offenders he has dealt with have no meaningful relationship with their fathers.
If we look at the outcomes for children who are brought up without a father in their life, the statistics are alarming. As Rt.Hon. Sir Michael Hardie-Boys, former Governor General of New Zealand has said, ???Fatherless families are more likely to give rise to the risk of being abused, of being emotionally, even physically scarred, of dropping out of school, of becoming pregnant, of living on the streets, of being hooked on alcohol or drugs, of being caught up in gangs and crime, of being unemployable, of having no ambition, no vision, no hope, at risk of handing down hopelessness to the next generation, and at risk of suicide???. That alone, should be enough to make us concerned that we have a problem that needs fixing. There are other studies in New Zealand that show children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely to develop serious psychiatric illness and addictions later in life.
Distraught
Fathers, distraught at been separated from their children are killing themselves at a rate of 3-4 a week. As a Bay of Plenty coroner has recently said, ???over a period of 13 weeks he has sat on 12 cases involving men committing suicide and that 9 of those had or were involved in Family Court issues or proceedings???.
How much evidence do we need before we make the much needed changes to such a failing Court system. Even a report done by the New Zealand Law Commission states, ???There is now wide-spread community dissatisfaction and lack of public confidence in our Family Courts. Delays in hearing cases are commonplace; staff are still inadequately trained; costs cripple families when finances are already stretched and strained, adding to the trauma of family breakdown. In addition, gender-bias (mainly, though not exclusively, anti-male gender-bias) is rampant and remains uncorrected???.
The Family Court is slowly destroying families and the moral fabric of New Zealand, and yet we have this Labour Government refusing to acknowledge there is a problem. Not only for family???s going through the Court but for the on-going negative affects in our community. Is it because (as Richard Prebble has stated), that ???Helen Clark and the rest of the childless cabinet have no sympathy or understanding of the issues facing families???.
When something goes rotten from the inside, the continuing decay is invisible to the casual eye. Eventually imperfections appear and spread quickly. That is what is happening in New Zealand as a consequence of our Family Law. It is the responsibility of the many people administering and regulating the system to find a better way. The public, and children especially, deserve much, much better.
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