Parents should be entitled to know where their children are at all times. Especially if there is NO evidence of abuse by the father that they have been removed from.

How is this allowed to happen to my father? 89 days without his children and this is being supported by the government? His wife appears to have been planning an intricate disappearance for a good while now. She will now be entitled to half of his assets.  

I want to know what the outcome of this situation would be if my Father was the Mother. I am not pointing fingers or making any bold statements about gender equality. I simply want to know what the outcome of this situation would be if my Father was the Mother of these four children.

If someone claims domestic violence, the person being accused should be assessed immediately, and supervision can be applicable whilst paperwork is being sorted through. To simply tell my father he is to live alone and go without his children for 89 days, especially when he’s done nothing abusive (I frequent the family home and talk to the children about all forms of deep and meaningful topics – there IS no abuse by my Father to the Mother or the four children.) MY own mother says she was always completely comfortable with my father being in our company when we were small children. I am asking that parents are NOT left in the dark, that they may see their children as a FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT.

The laws must be changed. This is bureaucratic torture to the finest degree. My father is distraught. I personally find it hard not to cry and think about the children. I worry for them. We want them back.

Please change.org,

FIGHT FOR FATHER’S RIGHTS.

HELP US FIND THE CHILDREN.

EMAIL THE FAMILY COURT.

MESSAGE THE PRIME MINISTER.

WE ARE DESPERATE!

My Father has been married to a woman for 12 years. We will call her L for the sake of her privacy (and for the purpose of not getting in trouble by the law). My Father and L have four beautiful, intelligent and delightful children.

They are 11 (female), 9 (female), 7 (female) and 5 (female). I am 26, my older brother is 29, and we have been visiting my Father weekly since we both moved out of home. Our Mother is from his previous marriage.

My Father may not be the most attentive husband on Earth, and is a simple man at best, but he certainly is non-abusive. The point is, he’s a wonderful Father. He is easy to get along with if you are nice to him. Even if you aren’t, he doesn’t enjoy arguments or fights in any way. He has always tried to avoid arguments and fighting. He marvels at the children’s excellent school reports and gives them compliments about how intelligent they are. They write him
notes saying “Love you Daddy!!!”

He is actually a very lovely soul. He raised me solely for many years (along with my charming older brother who shares similar sentiments of my Father). Never has he hit or abused me in any way, not once. I solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that this is the truth.

We have been witnessing my Father being a victim of verbal abuse by his wife for approximately 12 years. I remember the first fight they had, L had been in Australia for 3 days. Another time, she destroyed their marriage certificate in front of me. None of us understand why she was so angry. She had good days, and a few times offered me a brief smile. But this could change with the blink of an eye. All I needed to do was support my Dad in some regard, and she would say, “well aren’t you lucky you have your Indian daughter to help you out you ugly stupid Indian man.” I keep my cool for the kids, and pretend not to understand many of her insults. She also has a cleft palate, so her speech is very hard to understand, more-so when she is furious. Seeing the children cry because of an argument between myself and their Mother is simply not good enough. They don’t deserve it. So we try our hardest. Her four children are half Indian, which makes her racism more appalling.

On September 17, 2015, my Father came home to a house empty of his four beloved children. The police were called, and the children’s location was observed. Details of their welfare were then relayed to my father, though their whereabouts could not be disclosed.

My Father, who is an equal genetic donor to all four children, was withheld from information regarding his children.

I am continually being told by the Police that this matter is a matter for the Family Court of Western Australia. 

When we go to the Family Court of WA,  we are then required to undertake masses of incredibly confusing bureaucracy to see members of our own family when there is absolutely no evidence of abuse. We pay for parking, and miss days at work. We have to stand in lines and wait for our numbers to be called out. Then they ask us to pay for photocopying, which would be less offensive if we were given the correct paperwork to begin with.

When we went to court on September 23 (as a result of our filed paperwork), our case was confused. We were wanting the event to be in response to the Location Order paperwork (we thought we had filed correctly) so that we are able to see these kidnapped children as soon as possible. Instead, we were dealing with the issue of Injunction. L, native of the Philippines, took the children’s passports and her son’s birth certificate. We were then left scratching our heads yet again when the Judge said October 19 would be our next day in court after he enforced the Injunction. This was a success to some degree, but it didn’t bring the children home.

Later in September, my Father sent some court paperwork for L to sign and return to him. He could only do this by sending the letter to the residence of her Aunt, her only relative in the entirety of Australia. Her Aunt had L sign this paperwork, and it was returned via mail. This was all achieved by early October. We have done everything immediately so that this nightmare ends soon and the children come home, but despite our sincere and heartfelt efforts, L’s lawyer said they were not yet prepared for the case. Now we are asked to suffer more. With laws like this, and allowances like this, why should anyone plan a case at all?

I have learnt that in Australia, it is legal to kidnap your own children. It isn’t even considered kidnapping. You can also claim domestic violence, and without any evidence, lose your children for unknown lengths of time. 

Since September 17 we have screamed, cried and fretted constantly for the children.

L has never been fond of sharing with my Father. Some time before she absconded and kidnapped the children, she gave my Father $250 dollars when he asked for some assistance paying the very high utility bills. L, on every other occasion, has refused to share a cent of her benefits with my Father or the children. When she gave him the $250, she asked him to sign a receipt. My Father was confused by her generosity and signed the receipt. We now realise the receipt episode to be something she planned as further proof that she fiscally did anything for the family home. This was the only one time she ever gave my Father any money, and he ended up spending half the money on the celebration L organised after the baptism of the children that she requested, which he fulfilled even though he is not Catholic. There are happy family photos of that event. This was soon before she left. So what happened? 

How she is able to do all of absconding and kidnapping whilst also speaking minimal English in beyond me. Who ARE the children with? We have received a few strange text messages from someone speaking pure English. My Father has the RIGHT to know where his children are and who they are with.

Today was October 19. We went to court (me, my father and my two aunties) and L presented as a voice on a phone (not her voice – a lawyers) who said something about needing more time to organise their paperwork. They have also claimed that my Dad has been domestically abusive. I sat there in disbelief as my heart went into overtime. Such cruelty. So many lies. When I told my older brother afterwards, he said “What?” in such disbelief; I’ve never heard him react so passionately to a claim.

The judge then decided that, because L’s lawyer needs more time to organise the conjuring of tales, we are to return to court on December 14. That will mean, by that date, it will have been 89 days that my father has not seen his beloved children for absolutely no reason. This includes me and my brother, their doting half-sister and half-brother.

Heartache is not an adequate enough word. Where are the children? We know they are in Mandurah, because when we called DCP trying to find the children, they transferred us to the Mandurah DCP Office.

We have visited every governmental department, I’ve been to DCP Mandurah around three times, I have called the AFP also, and it seems that our rights are being entirely ignored. I am the half sister of these children. Do I have no rights to see them? We have not done anything wrong.

I’m sure we’d all be happy to under-go mental health assessments, lie-detectors, what EVER it takes to see this four precious children that have meant the world to me returned to their family home and their friends at school. They have missed dental appointments, for example. They have missed days at school. This is not good enough. This is destroying us. The pain is unimaginable. And what are the children going through?

Where is the evidence of any abuse that makes this a warranted movement by the Government? 

Despite my father having all four children taken from him, he has been offered absolutely no community or governmental support. There has been no relaying of information to him about his children’s welfare. He doesn’t know where they are going to school, or who else they are in the company of (aside from their Mother).

For a woman that came from the Philippines in 2002 and has refused to pursue English lessons, and only has one Aunty in Australia, you can imagine how concerned we are as a family about how the children are faring. I worry about their mother and her anger. What if they needed an ambulance or needed to be driven to the doctor’s? My father and my brother and I have Driving Licenses. L does not. She does not want a License and has made this very clear. 

It appears there was also no mental health assessment of L. One week before she disappeared, she called me an ugly Indian and told me never to come back to the house. She was angry because I advised my Father to have the children’s new kitten sterilised to adhere with WA law, (the same law that now throws us out).

It appears that, because L put her foot thr
ough the door first, she has all the governmental support she could possibly want. She has never worked. She has never wanted to work. She has done almost no house work in 12 years. My father does everything, earns 100% of the household income, helps the children with the homework because he speaks fluent English, and is an extremely caring Dad who is linked in with the school counsel. He also takes the children’s on outings when he isn’t working.

So, if L has made claims about my father, how come we don’t know what the claims are and whether they have been confirmed? We are so confused and so lonely. My father desperately misses his children. It is now October 19; over a month that he hasn’t seen his children for absolutely no good reason.

I would like to know what the reasoning is for DCP to withhold the children’s whereabouts from my father. Why is this happening to us?

Would this complete lack of care from the government apply if my father had taken the children?

Asking the public to seek assistance from Legal Aid or the Family Court of WA is void of any positive outcome, thus far. Legal Aid are is unable to smile or correctly use body language that shows they care even remotely.

The Family Law court staff are extremely unhelpful, and very hard to hear through the glass petition. They have also continually signed off on paperwork incorrectly and given us the wrong information. The paperwork is also composed horrifically. It is almost in another dialect of English. Does the Family Court of WA want people to fail?

Why are the community (who are in serious need of help and are usually distressed) expected to understanding overly bureaucratic and corporate style English? Why do the family court not assist members of the public with filling out these forms accurately? Surely, if people were more successful at the Family Court of WA (for example, if they didn’t have to revisit the Family Court a myriad of times because of administrative mistakes and horrific advice given on premise) there would be a lot more more harmony in the community. I fear for anyone who speaks English as a second or third language, because English is my first language and I do not understand almost an inch of this paperwork independently. 

Bureaucratic processes must change!

So, if the police are unable to help and the Family Court of WA do not assist the public in any productive way, how is one supposed to find one’s children? How is this possible at all? Do we go on a man hunt? Do we hospitalise ourselves because we are beyond depressed, feel ignored and are incredibly hurt? What DO we do. 

The children are not currently safe. I have expressed this countless times to authorities, yet they do not appear to be interested in more than one side of a story that appears entirely fabricated. My father is NON abusive. As mentioned prior, my brother and I were in his sole care for around 4 years when I was under 12 years old. He has always been involved in the schools we attend, is very social, cooks very well and supplies us with everything we need. My Dad does not believe in hitting. He is a good person. He just made a terrible decision. He married someone before getting to know who they really were.

No one has approached my father to assess his character or even speak to him about his missing children or mental welfare.

The children love their Mother which doesn’t confuse me – they have little to compare her to. How are the children being protected if they are confused and upset to no resolve? What do the children think about all of this? Surely they are missing their Father dearly, considering how big a part of their life he is?

It appears that fathers are not on DCP’s or the Family Court of WA’s radar at all. The lack of assistance is heartbreaking. Granted, if my father was known to be physically or mentally violent with the children, I would expect their locations to be withheld. But this is not the case. 

There are not many people in the world that would want to go a few minutes without their children, let alone 33 days, to be eventually 89 days. What will the cost be to the community if my father is hospitalised for grief? What will be the cost to the community if the children’s upbringing is based entirely on Centrelink/welfare payments? What about the cost to the children and their mental well-beings? And what about the costs of the psychologists the children may need as a result of them being in the sole care of an aggressive woman who removed them from a loving man that has done them absolutely no harm. There are a lot of costs associated with the children being away from their father, and being away from their half-sister. 

My Father’s wife ran away with the children and this has been considered completely legal. There are no costs associated with running away from the children, but we are the ones paying for parking and missing days at work and suffering hundreds of dollars in loss. For what? Why? How is this fair?

To the Family Law Court: Why is this process seen as more positive than us simply being told where the children are? My Father has been left to rot at the cruel hands of public services that can’t even look him in the eyes and smile, and for no good reason. I would like to know what the reasoning behind this is.

PLEASE HELP MY FAMILY.

WE WANT THE CHILDREN HOME.