Allegations of child sexual abuse: An empirical analysis of published judgements from the Family Court of Australia 2012–2019
dc.contributor.author | Webb, N., Moloney, L. J., Smyth, B. M., & Murphy, R. L. | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2021-07-21T18:35:05Z | |
dc.date.available | 2021-07-21T18:35:05Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2021 | |
dc.description.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 parents had the time they spent with their child(ren) increased by the court; and (e) in 17% of judgements, children's living arrangements were changed to the allegedly unsafe parent. | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | Webb, N., Moloney, L. J., Smyth, B. M., & Murphy, R. L. (2021). Allegations of child sexual abuse: An empirical analysis of published judgements from the Family Court of Australia 2012–2019. Australian Journal of Social Issues. | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ajs4.171 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11212/5182 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.publisher | Australian Journal of Social Issues | en_US |
dc.subject | International Resources | en_US |
dc.subject | Australia | en_US |
dc.subject | family law | en_US |
dc.subject | social policy | en_US |
dc.subject | child sexual abuse | en_US |
dc.subject | child welfare | en_US |
dc.title | Allegations of child sexual abuse: An empirical analysis of published judgements from the Family Court of Australia 2012–2019 | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |