Giving victims of family violence a chance to be heard

Deborah Mackenzie is co-founder of The Backbone Collective along with Ruth Herbert; a not for profit set up to give women who have experienced violence and abuse a way to safely tell those in authority what it is like to reach out for help. Mackenzie has

Family Court is a law unto itself. The New Zealand Family Court marches to its own drumbeat. In fact, until you are involved in it there is no way to describe or imagine how out of step it is with the rest of New Zealand. While the official message to New Zealanders is ‘‘It’s Not OK’ – The New Zealand Family Court’s position is more commonly ‘‘It never happened’’.

It seems counter-intuitive that when a woman leaves an abusive relationship she and her children will be made less safe by those paid to respond. However, that is the story told to Backbone by hundreds of New Zealand women who enter the Family Court.

One year ago my colleague Ruth Herbert and I launched The Backbone Collective – a new unfunded organisation set up to give women who have experienced violence and abuse a way to say how the ‘system ‘responded to them when they reached out for help. Since our launch we have been shining a spotlight on the Family Court. Nothing could have prepared us for what we have uncovered.

Backbone hears from hundreds of women via comprehensive online surveys, emails and Facebook messages. We have built a substantial membership of 1300 women.

To date we have run two comprehensive surveys on the Family Court and produced five detailed reports as a result. Our survey respondents came from all over New Zealand giving us an overall picture of the way the Family Court currently responds to many women and children who have experienced violence and abuse. We believe that response is alarming.

Women tell Backbone that after leaving an abusive partner they approach the Family Court for protection.

Many of these women leave when their children are young but end up spending years trapped in the Family Court; children are commonly spending their entire school years involved in Family Court proceedings.

Sadly, once at court women and children have told Backbone that those working in the Family Court do not believe their experiences of violence and abuse, minimise those experiences, blame the women for the abuse and accuse them of lying about the abuse to somehow get back at their ex-partner. It is common for mothers to be accused of parental alienation (a debunked theory which suggests a mother makes up allegations of violence to punish an ex) for example 44 per cent of the respondents said the court appointed Psychologist accused them of parental alienation when they raised safety concerns for their children.

Often the result of these accusations is that despite safety concerns, the judge forces children against their wishes to spend time in the care of their abusive fathers. We found that this happened to 54 per cent of children in family violence cases.

The health impacts were horrendous – high numbers of these children (67 per cent) had at least one of the following mental health conditions – anxiety, flashbacks, PTSD, disrupted sleep, and suicidal thoughts. In addition, 30 per cent of children were physically injured and 38 per cent were refused medical attention while in their abusive father’s care. We found nearly half of the children had told a Family Court professional about worries for their physical, sexual safety and/or their psychological safety while in their father’s care and yet in 66 per cent of cases those people did nothing to protect them from further abuse.

The Lawyer for Child service, set up to represent children in the Family Court, costs the taxpayer $32 million per annum and we found it is putting children in greater danger rather than less and failing to uphold their rights.

You might ask how this can all be going on under the general public’s nose and not a whiff of it seems to be stirring the nation’s conscience. We think the answer to this question lies in that most of the workings of the Family Court happen behind closed doors. There is a lack of accountability and transparency.

The media is expected to apply some of the checks and balances to this system but Backbone has discovered under an Official Information Act request that media had attended only 14 Family Court hearings in 2016.

So, if we can’t rely on the media to be the eyes and ears on the Family Court what other options are available? Part of the problem is that there is no one independent organisation responsible for the safe running of the Court or the monitoring or follow up of decisions made in it.

There are instead a number of complaints bodies who act as default monitors such as the Judicial Conduct Commissioner, The Law Society, The Psychologist Board.

However, these bodies only deflect women’s complaints back to the presiding Family Court Judge or refuse to take them up. It is therefore the autonomous power of individual judges, supported by the various professionals engaged by them, coupled with the closed and secretive nature of the Family Court, which makes it impossible to review, report, challenge or change the unsafe practices.

Backbone has been calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Family Court for a year now because the scale and nature of what we have uncovered is so bad we believe it is imperative that an in-depth investigation is begun, one that has the power and ability to lift all the stones and take a closer look.

You might ask how this can all be going on under the general public’s nose and not a whiff of it seems to be stirring the nation’s conscience.