I remember that I was standing at the entrance to Mascot Steel. It was raining. They were loading my van. Our Paediatric Specialist had rung me on my mobile to discuss Jannawi. She said that she recommended them. I reiterated my concern that Lea might be using them to “build a story”. She said “I asked them about that, they said that they don’t do that”. That was like one of those “don’t go back into the house “ moments in a horror movie. I knew without doubt that our paediatrician was trying to play me. Of course Jannawi were going to say “we don’t do that”. That’s like asking any prisoner on death row “are you guilty?”. Odds are that they’re likely to say “no”. Jannawi are criminals who’s criminality is disguised by public displays of good will. I have read articles suggesting similar behaviour had been exhibited by The Uniting Church. Members of The Uniting Church make up 50% of Jannawi’s board of directors.
The Sisterhood is real and they don’t like AVOs.
Points to take from this page:
The issues I describe below were no doubt made all the more possible because I had an AVO- even more so thanks to the Stalk/Intimidate charge.
It made me sound like a violent sex offender. I’m not.
Either way the health professionals that Lea was lying to ate it all up. Despite the fact that most of them had multiple high degrees.
Often common sense and academia are not good bedfellows.
Lea had secret meetings with at least two health professionals that we were seeing for various reasons for our children.
I’ve no doubt that she told both health professionals that she was a victim of DV.
One of our children was attending Rivendell, a mental health facility connected to Concord Hospital. The Head Psychologist had prior knowledge of my AVO, she knew before I did that it was coming. She treated me like scum after the AVO arrived. The feeling was mutual. That woman was treating our son.
The Psychologist at Rivendell never saw any behaviour to suggest that I was a perpetrator of domestic Violence. I rarely got to finish a sentence with Lea present anytime from when we started going until late 2018 when we stopped going. Lea interrupted me and yelled at me so much during meetings at Rivendell that they eventually interviewed us separately each time we went. That was both before and after the AVO. Regardless the Psychologist seemed to believe Lea’s story completely and spent a lot of time glaring at me in a condescending fashion.
The Psychiatrist (not the Psychologist) at Rivendell was the ONLY female medical professional (and they were ALL female with the exception of perhaps one family counsellor) I met during my four year divorce who didn’t immediately adopt a blindly biased attitude towards me. Go Dr BASIL! You ROCK! Personally I believe that Dr Basil never believed Lea’s allegations.
I’m sure that Lea said, at least, to our paediatric specialist, that she thought that I was being sexualy inappropriate with our daughters.
Our Paediatric Specialist appeared to believe Lea outright. If you haven’t read the previous chapter on Allegations of Paedophilia it contains some valuable comments on this very important issue.
Lea wanted the children to attend Jannawi, a child protection service located at Wiley Park. Our Paediatric Specialist worked very hard to try to get me to agree that our children should attend Jannawi.
In Feb 2017 Lea reported that my daughters were displaying sexualised behaviour to our paediatric specialist. This was the first of two attempts to get government intervention. Our paediatric specialist reported it to the Child Welfare Unit. They “dropped the call” meaning that they considered the reported behaviour to be normal or not unusual for children of that age.
Lea made up a whole new story for Jannawi and FACS in the following months. I had not read Lea’s Affidavit for The Family Court (submitted in 2017) until late 2018.
The behaviour reported in her Affidavit is way more serious than the stuff she initially told our paediatric specialist. Obviously the first attempt didn’t work so she “upped the ante” for the second attempt.
At the time of Lea first reporting to our Paediatric Specialist, Jannawi and FACS we had the children 50/50. Lea and I had them for 3.5 days a week each.
In fact I spent more time with the children than Lea as I never placed them in after school care nor did I employ babysitters, as Lea did.
I never saw even a fraction of the “sexualised” behaviour reported by Lea. It was all lies.
Our (now former) Pediatric specialist, The head psychologist at Rivendell, the staff at Jannawi and the two case workers from FACS were all female and they all believed Lea outright.
Each of them was exposed to different parts of Lea’s story. Each part had cracks in it. No one, and I mean not one person, was looking for cracks.
Here’s an example of some of the bullshit Lea was sprouting in her Affidavit. It’s a combination of outrageous rubbish and descriptions of normal exploratory behaviour for a child.
It still makes me queasy to read some of it. If you don’t mind risking feeling nauseous read on……
Leas’ Affidavit
When children display adult sexual behaviour, as my children are alleged to have been doing in the statement above, it is put down to the children experiencing or witnessed that behaviour.
The idea is that my children have been subjected to adult sexual behaviour or have seen it by watching someone bonk or witnessing pornography. Sadly, that happens all too often. That has never happened to my children.
The allegations above and whatever Lea also told the scum at Jannawi were enough to get a FACS investigation underway. Once that ball was rolling all Lea had to do is suggest that it may have been me.
She nearly got away with it.
It’s 2019, the allegations are 3 years old. There are still teachers at my children’s school who will not acknowledge my existence.
It leaves me wondering if these medical professionals (the staff at Rivendell who knew about my AVO before I did and my own, paediatric specialist) ever bothered to think “is this woman telling me a lie?”.
A huge amount of abuse goes unreported and if a medical professional suspects that someone has been abused then they must report it. That seems sensible. There’s no doubt that the whole process is under resourced. I wonder how what percentage of cases are simply angry people getting at their ex partners or perhaps trying to get a better deal in the sale of the family home at the time of a divorce. If we could root some of these out then we could direct those resources towards helping those that need it. Less trauma for fathers and less trauma for children.
I believe that my children’s experience at Jannawi left them emotionally damaged. It also effectively denied them access to proper psychological counselling during a very stressful time.
I can’t imagine that our paediatric specialist thought the consequences through too much before working so hard to try and get me to agree to take the children there. As I’ve repeatedly said before, I never agreed (read Lawyer’s Letter and My Letter regarding disapproval of Jannawi treatment from Chapter Thirteen).
Lea took them anyway. Because I was under non specific suspicion of being a sexual predator I lost my vote.
To place it in context our paediatric specialist had known me and my daughter for over a year prior to her trying to get me to agree to send her to Jannawi. Straight after the separation my daughter’s behaviour became a bit unruly so we sent her to a child psychologist who we saw about four or more times. The psychologist attended our daughter’s kindergarten and provided a lengthy report of her observations. All reports generated by the psychologist were shared with the paediatric specialist. The worked together on the issue. As well as the visits to the psychologist my daughter attended the paediatric specialist every month. My paediatric specialist was acutely aware of my daughter’s psychological state. I would have thought that she could easily pick up if my daughter was being abused in any way as she was so familiar with her personality. My daughter’s behaviour improved after the visits to the psychologist but otherwise remained unchanged.
My paediatric specialist suggested “Trauma Informed Counselling” was the best method to assist my daughter. She said that Jannawi used it and that our old child psychologist didn’t. I believe that this was done in an attempt to get me to agree with her suggestion that my children attend Jannawi. After finding that my children were attending Jannawi in secret I did go there and questioned the head and only counsellor about “Trauma Informed Counselling”. She said that it was one of 6 methods that she employed. In short she had a “holistic approach” to counselling and Trauma Informed Counselling was a fraction of that approach.
Prior to that moment I had thought of my Paediatric specialist as the most scientific medical practitioner I had ever encountered. She never made a move without a solid scientific reason and she wasn’t afraid to explain the reason to lay persons such as Lea and myself. After that meeting with the counsellor at Jannawi I felt quite violated. It seemed that someone I trusted had lied to me achieve an outcome that would eventually harm my children.
I have discussed this with counsellors. One suggested that it is possible that the paediatric specialist had at one time encountered sexual trauma and that’s why she seemed to abandon science and take an emotional approach. Our paediatric specialist knew our daughter well enough to know that she wasn’t being abused yet she decided to push Lea’s agenda which in turn caused my children emotional harm. Beware of the sisterhood.
There are no checks and balances along the way when you go through the family court process. My situation should have set off alarm bells but there are no such bells. A woman can make the most outrageous claims about an ex partner and, in my experience, most medical professionals will believe her. When it’s all over and it’s been established that she was most likely lying absolutely nothing will happen to her.
My female Barrister once said to me that “as a feminist I’m embarrassed by what women get away with in the family court”. If there are laws that women who make false accusations are breaking I’m not aware of them ever being enforced.
As I have said before if you develop a system where making outrageous accusations about your former partner may result in financial gain a percentage of people will make false accusations. If they can do so without any fear of retribution an even greater percentage of people will make those false accusations. The way the system is now it practically facilitates people making false statements about their partners being perpetrators of DV or sexual misconduct.
It makes you wonder how these medical professionals live with themselves. Perhaps they sit in their offices at night cradling their University degrees, much in the same way a proactive father would his own child…..if he had access to that child.
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