#false abuse

Allegations of child sexual abuse are being increasingly invented by mothers to stop fathers from seeing their children, says a retiring Family Court judge.

Justice David Collier, retiring from Parramatta Family Court at the end of the month after 14 years on the bench, sees unprecedented hostility infiltrating the Family Court, and a willingness by parents to use their children to damage one another.

”If a husband and wife really get down to it in this day and age, dirt flies,” Justice Collier said.

The worst are those mothers who direct false allegations of abuse against former partners.

”When you have heard the evidence, you realise that this is a person who’s so determined to win that he or she will say anything. I’m satisfied that a number of people who have appeared before me have known that it is one of the ways of completely shutting husbands out of the child’s life.

”It’s a horrible weapon.”

Such cases are fraught for Family Court judges. Once an allegation has been made it is impossible to ignore. The court must deem whether there is an ”unacceptable risk” of abuse occurring in the father’s care.

Sometimes the allegations are obviously fabricated, other times they are probably true.