Deborah Coddington: Hard to sympathise with angry, vengeful dads

Talk about the oppressed becoming the oppressors.

I used to voice support for groups such as the Union of Fathers, representing miserable dads barred from seeing their children by heartless ex-wives and partners. But lately they've taken to making life miserable for other families just because the mum or dad happens to be a Family Court lawyer.

The protesters are behaving the same way as the women they hate. Find a target, vent your wrath, take no responsibility for your actions and to hell with whoever gets hurt in the process.

Last week we heard the 6-year-old son of family barrister Stuart Cummings was so terrified after a noisy weekend protest that he'd wet his bed. His 14-year-old sister ran screaming and hysterical from the home. Fathers' spokesman Jim Bagnall reportedly had no regrets about their obviously threatening behaviour because Mr Cummings had acted for the children of a man who was protesting.

Fathers' groups say the Family Court destroys what we are expected to believe were happy families - but who separated in the first place? I don't recall officials from the Family Court rampaging through suburbia, randomly selecting innocent families and forcing them to split up.

Furthermore, only 5 per cent of the 60,000-plus Family Court cases filed annually actually end up in front of a judge. That leaves some 3000 parents who can't see past their own selfishness to what's best for their children. Then again, why would parents who treat children as if they are chattels think children might actually have feelings of their own? Parents who end up in court fighting over the kids, as if they're no more precious than wedding presents, don't deserve to be parents. Sometimes I wish the judges would strip both mum and dad of their rights and give the children to someone who really cares.

When mum and dad take their personal vendettas to the Family Court, it's the children who suffer. When groups like Jim Bagnall's Union of Fathers take their rage to the houses of family lawyers, it's the justice system that suffers.

Because what sane lawyer would choose Family Court work when there's a chance their weekend peace will be destroyed by carloads of men and women screaming like banshees? Turn the hose on them or throw rocks at their feet and you risk ending up in court yourself, defending a common assault charge.

The trouble is with these protesters is that they'll never be satisfied, no matter what happens in the justice system. Bagnall complains that despite protesting outside the courts, lobbying MPs and making submissions, "it got us nowhere".

He is categorically wrong on that. As an MP for Act, Dr Muriel Newman fought hard to open up the Family Court to public view and she did make a small difference.

These days, except when one parent moves overseas, it is not possible to use the Family Court to permanently shut one parent out of a child's life.

The Family Court underwent a shake-up on July 1 this year when the Care of Children Act came into force. Parenting orders replaced custody and access orders, enabling more "shared parenting" as opposed to tugs-of-war over the kids. Under the new act, mums and dads are encouraged to continue parenting their children co-operatively, on a day-to-day basis if physically possible. "Interim orders", which could prevent one parent from having any contact at all with a child and were often used to delay settling disputes, thus alienating that parent from their child for a dangerously long time, now have time limits. Breaching orders - once a common occurrence by a parent who, as Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier says would treat them as "therapeutic" - is punishable by up to three months' jail.

Boshier himself has been subjected to death threats, targeted by disgruntled fathers when a court decision went against them. If judges have any doubts about the difficult decisions they're forced to make in Family Court cases, I'm sure subsequent threats must convince them they've made the right call. Maybe that "bitch" assisted by her "femi-nazi psychologist" wasn't "making up" the accusations of violence after all.

But vindictive parents care more about their own lives than the feelings of their children. It's easy to use children as weapons to punish a former spouse; much harder to forgo revenge for the sake of a bewildered child's happiness. Kids don't ask for divorce, so why do these protesting fathers and supporters take pride in compounding children's suffering?