Allegations of child sexual abuse: An empirical analysis of published judgements from the Family Court of Australia 2012–2019

Abstract

Allegations of child sexual abuse pose agonisingly difficult issues for families, family law professionals and the courts. We present data from the population (N=521) of Family Court of Australia judgements containing allegations of child sexual abuse published in the Australasian Legal Information Institute's Australian database. Our data cover all in-scope judgements published between mid-2012 and mid-2019, of which 71 dealt with cases that were uncontested. A further 70 were contested but the allegations were abandoned before the end of the trial. We classified the remaining 380 cases as "fully contested". Of this group: (a) in 14% of cases, judicial officers expressed a direct or clearly implied belief that the allegations of child sexual abuse were true; (b) risk of sexual harm to a child was found in 12% of judgements; (c) when no risk of sexual harm was found, judges were more than twice as likely to regard the allegations as genuine but mistaken rather than to have been deliberately misleading; (d) just under two-thirds of allegedly unsafe | 323 WEBB Et al.

Experiences of people with mental ill-health involved in family court or child protection processes : A rapid evidence review

“…Mental health concerns are common for parties initiating or responding to family law matters that proceed to judicial determination. Webb et al (2021) provide the most recent and comprehensive examination judgements from the Family Court of Australia between 2012 and 2019 in which parties raised clearly defined allegations of child sexual abuse. From an initial set of 841 judgments involving an allegation that a child was at risk of sexual harm in the care of one parent or the other, a further 320 were excluded for a range of reasons, including because they involved "chaotic parenting for most of a child's life … such as a history of involvement by child protection authorities, mental health issues, violence, abuse of alcohol or other drugs, on the part of both parents, sometimes in conjunction with allegations by both parents of sexual abuse in the care of the other parent" (p. 6).…”

Allegations of child sexual abuse in the Family Court of Australia: Response to Parkinson

“…We (Webb et al, 2021) recently sought to document the outcomes of all ( N = 521) published judgements in which allegations of child sexual abuse were made in the Family Court of Australia between 2012 and 2019. In each judgement, at least one child was alleged to be at‐risk of sexual harm while in the care of the other parent.…”

Findings of unacceptable risk – A comment on Webb et al.'s analysis of child sexual abuse allegations in the Family Court of Australia

“…

Webb et al (2021) have written an important study of the outcomes of cases in the Family Court of Australia in which child sexual abuse has been alleged. In 90 per cent of the fully

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