Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, danielle Black. What if I told you that new Australian research shows that children exposed to intimidation and coercive control have more than double the odds of developing PTSD? And yet family court professionals routinely miss or mislabel those very patterns of abuse, and then they turn around and blame the parents for engaging in conflict. If you're new to the podcast, this is a raw and unfiltered space where we share the child-centered evidence that other professionals can't or won't put on the table. Today we're diving into research that reveals a professional competence crisis, hiding in plain sight Evidence that proves what protective parents have been saying for years that the people who are making life-changing recommendations about our kids' safety and best interests often don't recognise the very abuse patterns that they're supposed to protect them from. Before we go further, let me be crystal clear this is not anti-father content. I'm a happily married woman. My husband is a brilliant and involved dad. This conversation is about protecting all kids from all harmful parenting, no matter which parent it comes from. I'm not anti-father, I'm pro-child, and pro-child means insisting that every parent-child relationship is safe, healthy and developmentally appropriate. In this episode we'll unpack the University of Queensland research showing the serious mental health risks for children exposed to coercive control. The evidence of how family court professionals keep failing to identify these patterns. Why calling documented abuse quote conflict isn't neutral, it's negligent. How this incompetence fuels systemic harm in the family court system, and what this might mean for your case.

Speaker 1: 1:56

In 2025, researchers at the University of Queensland published a landmark paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Dr Julie Blake and her team analysed data from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study more than 8,500 Australians to look at four forms of childhood domestic violence Physical violence, threats of harm, property damage, including harm to pets. And here's the big one. Intimidation and control, including harm to pets. And here's the big one intimidation and control, what we now recognize as coercive control. And here's what they found Children exposed to domestic violence in childhood had significantly higher odds of PTSD compared to those who weren't. And intimidation and control, so coercive control, was the single strongest predictor. Specifically, exposure to intimidation and control was linked with about a 2.3-fold increase in the odds of PTSD. Think about that more than double the likelihood of lasting trauma. And it doesn't stop at PTSD. Women exposed as children had the highest rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidality. Men showed higher rates of alcohol and substance disorders.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Coercive control is not soft abuse. It's not quote just conflict. This is documented trauma with lifelong mental health consequences. Dr Blake's team did not mince words about where coercive control continues. It continues through the weaponisation of children in family law, manipulating kids to spy on a parent, undermining the child's bond with the protective parent, withholding child support. This is what happens when coercive control keeps running through the very system that is designed to protect our kids.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Dr Blake made the point clearly, quote it's no longer appropriate to measure domestic violence without accounting for coercive control. End quote. And yet that's exactly what is happening every day in family courts across Australia. Now you might be thinking surely family court professionals are trying to pick this up. Unfortunately, the research says otherwise. In 2021, the Attorney General's Department asked stakeholders how to improve family report writer competency and the answers were damning. Professionals urgently need training in family violence, trauma-informed practice, working with children and, yes, coercive control. So let's think about that for a moment.

Speaker 1: 4:27

The very professionals writing reports and providing recommendations that shape children's futures post-separation often don't have the basic competencies to identify the abuse patterns that are linked with PTSD, depression and self-harm. And this is not just theoretical Research led by Dr Heather Douglas and Associate Professor Samantha Jeffries, found that family report writers struggle to differentiate coercive control from other types of violence. Even after the 2012 family law reforms, there was a clear mismatch between what professionals said they understood and what they actually wrote in their assessments and recommendations. Legal professionals interviewed in the study admitted that abuse was often minimised, dismissed or even completely ignored in reports. One said quote sometimes they leave out the most atrocious violence. They don't want to recognize it. End quote. This is not neutral. This is systematic failure. And when coercive control is missed, what does it get called? Conflict or high conflict or communication difficulties? But when professionals reframe abuse as conflict, they erase responsibility, they blame both parents equally and they put kids into unsafe parenting arrangements.

Speaker 1: 5:56

But professional incompetence does not happen in a vacuum. It creates a systematic weaponization of the entire family court system against protective parents and children. Here's how it works A family ends up in the court system because there's disagreement about the post-separation parenting arrangements. The court orders a child impact report or a family report from a quote expert family. Then the incompetent professional fails to identify coercive control. Rather, it gets labelled as quote conflict. Next, the report recommends significant time for the children to spend with the protective parent, often saying things like quote the court gives significant weight to family reports and the recommendations of report writers. Protective parents then feel forced to consent to arrangements that they know are harmful and children are placed in danger without judicial oversight. Finally, the perpetrator is emboldened by the expert validation when family report writers can't identify coercive control. They don't just write bad reports with bad recommendations, they're handing perpetrators a weapon.

Speaker 1: 7:20

That report becomes the basis for lawyers to pressure protective parents. Pressure where the foundation is a supposed expert recommending significant or substantial time for the child to be in the care of the abusive parent, with the parent told that this is what the court is likely going to follow and so the parent should just agree. This isn't legal advice. This is systemic coercion enabled by professional incompetence. Clients paying a private lawyer have got a devastating choice Go along with the recommendations of the report writer arrangements that they know are harmful to their kids or fight it, potentially risking financial ruin with an uncertain outcome.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Legal aid clients in Australia face an even more dire situation. They can accept the arrangements as recommended by the report writer, even though they know that they're not good for their kids, or they can try to put up a fight but have threats of their funding being withdrawn, being told that there's no legal basis for what they're seeking in orders with no support to challenge the supposed expert report, and then they're faced with having to self-represent if they want to stay the course, facing the legal system alone while the perpetrator has professional representation. I'm working with people right now that are in these impossible situations, because the reality is that sometimes, even after problematic reports, sometimes a judge will see through what's going on. Sometimes cross-examination will unpack what's really been happening. However, before we get to that point, there can be some incredibly problematic precedents set with the parenting arrangements that can be very, very difficult to undo.

Speaker 1: 9:13

What we have in this country with family law is class-based discrimination. When legal aid lawyers tell protective parents that they have no legal basis to challenge incompetent family reports, they're creating a two-tiered system. Wealthy families can challenge professional incompetence, albeit at oftentimes a devastating cost, but families with economic struggles are forced to accept it. This means that your income determines whether your children deserve protection from abuse patterns that research proves cause higher PTSD rates, among other harms. When incompetent reports validate perpetrators, they become relentless in pursuing maximum time because the professional expert supports their position. They believe that they're quote winning, the system appears to be validating their behaviour and they have institutional backing to continue their push for significant time. Often what they're seeking is equal, shared parenting time.

Speaker 1: 10:13

So how do you protect your kids when the professionals making the decisions about their safety lack basic competence in identifying abuse? First you start asking the right questions. If your report is going to be completed by a private report writer, it's important, whether you or via your lawyers, find out what specific training that report writer has had in coercive control identification. Finding out how a report writer differentiates between conflict and coercive control, finding out what assessment tools they use to identify non-physical patterns of abuse. And, after the fact, if there's problematic recommendations, seeking that the report writer explain why they've characterised specific behaviours as conflict rather than coercive control.

Speaker 1: 11:04

This University of Queensland research is your evidence base. When professionals dismiss coercive control as quote just conflict, you now have proof that these patterns cause measurable psychological damage to children. You can confidently state you've described this as conflict. But the behaviours that have been documented, that have been noted in the report intimidation, control, manipulation match the research definition of coercive control, given that the research shows that exposure to coercive control in childhood is associated with more than double the odds of PTSD, amongst other harms. Shouldn't you be assessing this as potential abuse rather than conflict? Here's the truth. When family court professionals label coercive control as mere conflict, they're not being neutral, they're being negligent. The University of Queensland research shows that intimidation and control are linked with more than double the odds of PTSD for kids, and the Attorney General's consultation and academic research shows that many family report writers still lack the basic competence to identify these patterns. The result Children are being placed in harmful parenting arrangements every day on the basis of recommendations by professionals who don't have the training to recognise the abuse that's staring them in the face.

Speaker 1: 12:33

But how did we get here? This lack of professional competence didn't happen overnight. Join me in the next episode, part two, where we're going back in time 20 years to explore how we got to this current crisis, because the professional failures that I've just exposed aren't accidental. They're actually the predictable result of policy changes that fundamentally misunderstood what children really needed, specifically the story of how quote progressive family law reform actually made kids less safe in Australia and why children were honestly better protected when the norm was spending every other weekend with the non-primary caregiver, before I leave you today, I want to make sure that you have some practical tools to start protecting your kids immediately.

Speaker 1: 13:23

I've created several free resources that directly address what we've discussed today the Post-Separation Abuse Checklist and Workbook. This is incredibly relevant to today's episode. It helps you to identify and document the very coercive control patterns that the research has associated with higher rates of PTSD in children, but that what we now know professionals consistently miss. You'll learn how to recognise these patterns and document them in ways that will make it more difficult for them to be dismissed as mere conflict. There's the capacity challenge. This resource introduces my proprietary three-step protective parenting framework that helps you to maintain your focus on what actually protects kids, even when the professionals are pressuring you to accept harmful arrangements.

Speaker 1: 14:11

And the five most common mistakes that parents make in early separation. This guide and mini private podcast episode are available for people who sign up to the wait list for the post-separation parenting blueprint. This mini guide helps you to avoid the traps that can undermine your case before you even get to the family report stage. Avoiding some of these common mistakes is important because when you make some of these common mistakes, it can actually make it easier for incompetent professionals to mischaracterize the abuse as conflict. All of these resources are completely free available on my website.

Speaker 1: 14:49

I created them because I know that, while we're working on systematic reform, parents need tools that they can use right now to protect their kids within this broken system, and this is what I do. This is what I'm supporting my clients with every day. This is what I've been supporting protective parents with for the past five years. Remember, none of this is about being difficult or demanding. This is about ensuring that the people that are making life-changing decisions for your family, for your kids' safety and well-being not just now but in the years to come actually know how to identify the very patterns that the research associates with lasting psychological harm. That's not too much to ask. It's the absolute minimum that we should be expecting. So get those free resources, start asking the hard questions and keep fighting for what the evidence shows our kids need. Thank you so much for being here with me. I'll look forward to chatting with you soon.