Lost custody, she must be bad. Or is it a myth hiding a terrifying reality?

It's logical to believe that if the Family Court takes a child away from their mother, she must be bad. It's a comforting myth hiding a much more terrifying reality. Right now, women across Australia who had the courage to leave violent, controlling relationships in the hopes of a safer future are having their children cruelly taken from them. Not because they are unfit, but because the systems meant to protect kids are failing. And where money can buy a better defence, a mother's well-founded fears can be manipulated. This is the ultimate cruel irony of the family law system – the more traumatised a mother is by domestic abuse, the more her credibility can come into question and she risks losing the children she fought so hard to protect. Living for years under coercive control, fearing for your safety, does something to a person. For some, their mental health spirals and coping becomes harder. Some victims can no longer hold down jobs and leaving their abusive partners means they are left with little or no money and forced to live in unstable accommodation. These aren't choices anyone wants to make but are often necessary for survival. These decisions can raise alarm in court, especially in cases where the other parent is seemingly stable. A victim enters the courtroom with a life turned upside down, while the perpetrator arrives unburdened by trauma and with funds to hire experienced lawyers. The court looks favourably upon parents who are willing to foster a relationship with the other parent. For the protective parent who know what the other is capable of, it places them in a dangerous situation: fight for sole custody or risk losing their child altogether. Those with fears for their children's safety are rarely going to agree to a scenario which delivers them unsupervised into the hands of violence. They will fight hard in ways that can be misinterpreted as uncooperative or hostile. Suddenly, the perpetrator can be viewed as the victim of an uncooperative ex in a system sceptical of child abuse, and in some cases, be awarded custody or unsupervised access. In the worst cases, women are prohibited from seeing or even speaking to their children for months at a time, a tactic used by the courts to forcibly facilitate a bond with the other parent. For these victims, leaving their relationships did not end the abuse or make them safer, as they might have been promised. The torment simply moved to a new arena where the stakes were that much greater and the final, devastating blow was delivered by the very system designed to protect them. Originally published as The cruel irony of a system that hands children of abuse victims to perpetrators Aneeka Simonis is an award-winning journalist covering courts, crime and justice for the Herald Sun.