Anonymous Submission from UNSW Law Society Member
I grew up in a family environment where my father was abusive to myself and my siblings. When my parents began divorce proceedings, we (my brother and sister and I) were assigned an independent child's lawyer. I remember my mother driving us to the Legal Aid office where we waited for our appointment. We were asked to sit in a waiting room while the lawyer was finishing another appointment. The waiting room was painted in the unnatural hue of cheap fluorescent lightbulbs, making every surface seem a little bit sickly. Waiting for our turn, I mentally prepared what I wanted to say to my lawyer: that my father was abusive, that I never wanted to see him and that it was dangerous for my siblings to be alone with him. I also looked at my sister, only in elementary school at the time. She looked so composed for her age. I couldn't help but think she was going through the same thought process. When it was time for the appointment, a large blocky man came out to greet us. We were guided into his office. Introducing himself as ‘Steve’, we learned that he was a former police officer and a ‘true blue footy fan’. He asked if I liked football, I said no. From his small sigh, I could sense disappointment. Explaining that he would present our views to the court, he asked for each of our opinions. I started, reciting the script I had been planning in the waiting room. Steve looked at me in confusion, ‘you really don’t want to see your dad? Every bloke needs a dad’. I said that if your dad were abusive then you wouldn’t want one either. He looked at my sister and asked her the same question. She responded that he was ‘not a good person’. Steve sighed, ‘See, I spoke with your dad. And he was crying, and blokes don’t cry unless they care about something. That shows me he really cares about you.’ I remember how odd that sounded, I replied slowly ‘he does that to manipulate you to make you do something,’ adding that he had an explosive temper and would hit you as easily as he could hug you. Steve didn’t seem to buy that. ‘You see, the way I see your dad, well, it’s like footy. I used to play football with the team, and he is like a cheerleader, shouting from the sidelines. It’s just that sometimes he gets too passionate, you know? He just gets carried away sometimes.’ I tried again, ‘but he’s abusive?’ After much arguing with Steve about whether or not our dad was abusive, Steve told the Court that my sister and I did not want to see our dad again and the Court ordered it so. However, my brother, who is non-verbal, did not receive the same result. Instead, he was required to still have unsupervised visits with our dad— a man that we repeatedly told the lawyer ‘representing’ us was abusive.
Court of Conscience Issue 14, 2020
7
