Professor Freda Briggs Lashes into the Sex-Abuse Royal Commission in 2014, Part One

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

GumshoeNews has received a stunning document concerning the story that we have been sleuthing for the last ten months. It covers almost every aspect of the chicanery involved in depriving Protective parents of their children. And it was written by a person most qualified to know.

I am referring to Professor Freda Briggs’ submission to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. She spoke as an academic, specifically as a tertiary-level trainer of social workers.

In order to highlight the parts of her submission that can help us cut through the barriers we have encountered, in regard to the Protective parent issue, I will mock-up an interview here.  Of course I cannot interview Briggs, as she died in 2016, but I can “interview,” as it were, her 2014 submission.

All replies to my questions are taken verbatim (abridged) from her submission to the Royal Commission. I kept her numberings and added some bolding. Note: Freda often speaks of “Families SA,” a government agency that is now defunct.

Mary: Professor, thank you for such a comprehensive report. Even if you got little in the way of positive results  from the RC, your 2014 submission can now help Australia and the world. I ask you first to tell us about your faculty-based effort to get the University of South Australia to include training in the signs of child abuse as part of the curriculum for students majoring in Social Work, given that social workers are, like teachers and doctors, mandated to report any child abuse that they observe.

Freda: 1.2. For years, UniSA fought against providing mandatory reporting training for student teachers and it was only when lawyers advised the university that it could be sued by students that this changed. Management argued that it was the responsibility of employers to train employees.

1.3.  Over the years, government ministers and Families SA CEOs met successive Deans of Social Work at UniSA (and, I believe, at Flinders University) and failed to influence change in undergraduate courses. Contrary to the requirements of the Australian Association of Social Workers, UniSA’s  4 year social work  Honours Degree course does not include child development or child abuse.

Mary: Wow. That is a shocker. It makes me wonder who, in the universities, was opposed to such training and why. I believe that in response to the fuss you were making, Prime Minister John Howard gave a $10 million grant to create a national multi-disciplinary child protection centre that would assist all Australian universities to include child abuse, development and protection issues in human service courses including law, health professions, psychology, counselling, teaching, child care, nursing and social work.

Freda: The endowment was given to UniSA, a social worker was appointed as director, the centre concentrated on research and failed to fulfil its intended educative role. Child development and education experts, including the writer [Freda], were excluded.

Mary: I see that you have commented on the difficulty of navigating the legal aspects where a parent accuses the other parent, in Family Court, of child abuse.

Freda: 2.2. It has long been widely believed among staff, CEOs and state parliamentarians Australia-wide that

(a) state services/police are not allowed to intervene if there is a Family Court Order in place or there is a case in the Family Court involving the child; and

(b) the Family Court will conduct the investigation when, in reality, it is not resourced to do so….

Freda: 2.2. The failure of Families SA to investigate allegations of incest has resulted in children being ordered to live with their accused abusers (sometimes convicted child sex offenders), enduring further abuse of all kinds. When additional evidence of abuse is reported, Families SA’s response to parents (and me) has been “The file is closed”.

Mary: This is exactly what parents have been telling Gumshoe – except instead of Families SA being the blocking point it is now CPS, Child Protective Services – or, in Queensland, DOCS – Department of Child Safety.

Freda: 2.3  The criminal justice system does not cater for incest/child sex abuse victims who lack the maturity and sophisticated communication skills needed to withstand cross examination by barristers in the criminal court. Royal Commissioner The Hon. Justice Peter McClellan AM recently expressed concern that comparatively few offenders are prosecuted and convicted.

Mary:  Aha! What an internal contradiction – the Family Court seems to be the entity that can help but lacks the mandate. And then we have the DPP’s obstructing us.

Freda: 2.4. If the perpetrator is not convicted and the department does not have the incest victim assessed and/or the abuse is not “substantiated”, the protective parent faces a dilemma. If s/he does nothing, the child can be removed into the care of the [state] minister as being in need of care and protection. If there is no prosecution, the perpetrator is likely to seek residence of the victim through the Family Court because of the ease with which it can be claimed that the protective parent (usually the mother) either (a) trained the child to make false allegations of abuse or (b) is delusional. The protective parent is then labelled as the dangerous parent and loses residence of the child. If the child makes further reports of abuse, they are ignored by all child protection services.

Mary: That is unconscionable in every way. Clearly a game is being played here in order that child abuse will flourish! Any citizen would logically expect that the police’s help can be sought where a crime is being committed and that an organization sporting the name “Child Protection” or “Child Safety” will come to the fore as needed. I now think those nice-sounding bodies exist for the purpose of drawing attention away from the criminality that abounds.

Freda:  2.5.  The notion that children and mothers lie about incest is alive and well, contrary to international and Australian research. A mythical mental illness that only affects mothers in incest cases was accepted into Australian family law in 2003. Called Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS), this was the creation of a self-published paedophilia-supporting American named Richard Gardner in 1985.

The mother’s illness supposedly caused children to imagine that they had been sexually abused by their fathers when they hadn’t.  This would have been laughable had it not had such serious consequences. Although neither Gardner nor his idea had scientific credibility, the “Syndrome” gained acceptance throughout the English-speaking world, ensuring that child sex offenders gained contact/residence of their victims.

Mary: The same guy, Gardner,  was involved in the CIA’s masterstroke, the “False Memory Syndrome” that shut down the efforts of victims of MK-Ultra torture to speak out.

Freda: 2.6. Through FOI it was found (and published in The Advertiser) that, in successive years, the Family Court made around 40 requests for intervention by Families SA and the requests were refused. There is a long history of resentment relating to federal (Family Court) versus state funding.

Mary: Thank you for informing me about that. I have been blaming the judiciary almost exclusively.

Freda: 3.1 Social workers have authority but lack accountability and transparency. As shown in the Chloe Valentine inquest … Families SA workers have a history of concocting reports to justify their actions or inaction.  Some have been caught blatantly fabricating reports for the youth court as well as CEOs and Ministers.  Some said, “We will be here long after the Minister moves on”. In one serious case … a social worker blatantly falsified a report for Minister Weatherill and she sent a message to the complainant which said, “Thank you for reporting me. I’ve been transferred and promoted”.

Mary: I bet such things have been hard for you to bear, Professor. I note that although you are indefatigable in your efforts to help children – including authoring the great book Child Protection – no government entity is doing anything to correct the errors you identify.

Freda: 3.1. False information and defamatory opinions have been recorded when there were personality clashes between inadequate young social workers and well educated, middle aged, experienced foster carers. The carers were unaware of what was written and they have no avenue of appeal when such information is recorded.

In the Family Court case of Grange v Langmeil, Families SA persistently said that the children had been assessed on three occasions since 2008 after reporting anal rape by their father and yet when asked for the dates of the assessments, CEO Tony Harrison admitted that no assessment had ever taken place.

Mary: This is what we hear all the time.

Freda: On November 7^th. The Hon Christopher Pyne confirmed in writing that “the admission is in the October 7  2014 letter in the last para.” It is framed in such a way to be rather impenetrable but it means that no assessment of Michael was ever made…. He added, “But we are now able to pursue Families SA and SAPOL over this failure that caused this doubt to now arise”.

Mary: That’s good.

Freda: 3.1. The children are still residing with their accused father and the mother is not aware of any assessment taking place.

3.2 The writer is aware of damning documents being removed from Families SA files sought through Freedom of Information by politicians, lawyers and, very recently, the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner (HCSCC). Pages had been blatantly torn out of residential care daily journals when sought through FOI for legal purposes in the civil case of Meekins v The Crown.

Mary: I will ask Gumshoe to report that civil case. Mums have been threatened if they let Gumshoe write about current Family Law cases. But really Section 121 of the Family Law Act does not forbid publication, only revelation of persons’ identities.  Lot of bullying here.

Freda: 4.1 A bullying culture was revealed in our survey of social workers and police. Social workers gave examples of how they were bullied by senior staff and foster carers were the most vulnerable to bullying given that they are ‘volunteers’ at the bottom of the hierarchy and have neither rights nor a platform for appeal.

Case workers, teachers and police gave evidence that they were deterred by line managers from reporting child abuse. Carers in small towns were worst affected. Adolescent foster children who had experienced numerous foster homes were empowered by making false allegations of abuse when they did not like the house rules and knew that a report would result in removal to a new placement and the de-registration of the carer.

Mary: What about the lawyers?

Freda: 6.2. A report was sent to Attorneys General in 1995 recommending that there should be a separate and special, inquisitorial court for child sexual abuse cases involving child witnesses. This would be staffed by a panel of rostered child/abuse experts assisted by a legal officer. Most importantly, the panel would have the authority and means to investigate all of the evidence. The well-being of the child and the treatment of suitable offenders would be a priority. However, the report was ignored and the SA Attorney General commented that the legal profession would resist change because the current system makes it easy for lawyers to “get their clients off” when children are the only witnesses.

Mary: I am deeply ashamed of the legal profession.  And no matter how much a judge may have been “fooled,” I don’t see how any intelligent judge can actually be fooled. Blind Freddy can see the pattern of these cases. Shame on the judiciary.

Freda: 6.4. In 1999, ABC TV Four Corners showed a horrendous documentary entitled Double Jeopardy. This showed how the court system inflicted psychological abuse on child sexual abuse victims. Some of Australia’s senior judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and victims agreed that this was intolerable.  Justice Helen O’Sullivan and Justice Robinson courageously said that if their children were sexually abused they would never allow them to suffer the ordeal of a trial in the courts….

The documentary showed the bullying of a young victim in Brisbane Magistrates Court by a solicitor who accused him repeatedly of lying and when he collapsed in tears, was told that he was only crying because he was a liar and had been caught out. This documentary was so distressing that Dr. Annie Cossins, UniNSW, contacted the judges and obtained their support to create a committee to examine alternative legal systems.

The committee consisted of senior members of the judiciary, lawyers, Commissioners for Children, DPPs and academics (including the writer). After ten years, a  lengthy report was published : “ Alternative Models for Prosecuting  Child Sex Offences in Australia” (available on the internet).  [But] it has been ignored.

Mary: Professor Briggs, we have a 2,000 word-limit for Gumshoe articles, and your report goes on for many thousands more words, so we will take up other ideas from your 2014 Submission to the Royal Commission in a further article.

A friend of mine in Adelaide told me that you feared you would be killed and had to “look over your shoulder all the time.” That accords with what parliamentarian Peter Lewis said about reporters of child abuse getting bumped off. I, too, am in fear of strong punishment for taking up this issue. Just know, please, Freda, that although you died two years ago, your work has by no means died and will ultimately help this nation sort out what has gone on and fix it up.