Posts Tagged ‘family law reform’

Call to make parental abductions a crime

The Family Law Reform Association of New South Wales is calling on the Federal Government to make it a crime for a parent to take a child out of Australia without the other parent’s consent.

About 150 children are taken overseas without permission each year, and the association says it is a form of child abuse.

It says the number of children affected is alarming and the law reformers have written to the Federal Attorney-General, asking him to criminalise the abductions.

The abductions are so common there is now an acronym for them – International Parental Child Abduction (IPCA).

Deputy Commissioner of the New South Wales Fire Brigades, Ken Thompson, had his son abducted in April 2008, and is now spokesman for the Coalition of Parents of Abducted Children.

“In April 2008, my son Andrew was kidnapped from Australia by his mother,” he said.

“They left the country, went to Singapore, then to Germany and they since disappeared without any trace. I just never imagined anything like this would happen.”

Mr Thompson said despite his wife exhibiting strange behaviour in late 2007, he had no inclination she would flee with their son.

“My wife was behaving very, very strangely in December 2007,” he said. “She was preventing me from having any contact with Andrew whatsoever.

“She then started to make some very, very serious allegations. I then took her to court to be able to resume my relationship with my son and to have her allegations investigated.”

Part way through the court process, his wife fled the country with their child.

Because she left during a court case, Mr Thompson was able to convince police she had breached the Family Law Act, enabling him to get some help.

“Because a crime hadn’t been committed under the Crimes Act, there was a lot of uncertainty about what the authorities could actually do, and that is when I realised there is a massive hole in our legislation,” he said.

“The vast majority of children who are abducted from Australia are abducted outside the Family Court process and in those cases, thorough investigations can’t be done because no crime has been committed.”

Read more…Push to criminalise parental abductions – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)