A judge who threatened to remove a mother\u2019s custody of her daughter has been found to have conducted a \u201cfundamentally flawed\u201d hearing that denied the family justice.<\/p>\n
The High Court overturned District Court directions for the resumption of access visits between the young teenager and her father. It also reinstated a protection order the mother had against the man and ordered a new District Court judge to hear the parental access application afresh. <\/p>\n
High Court judge Garrett Simons said the orders had been made without the District Court having heard the child\u2019s up-to-date views, which was a \u201cfundamental requirement\u201d. <\/p>\n
A year-old report no longer provided a reliable account of the girl\u2019s opinions, he said, and there had been significant developments since it was prepared, including an alleged deterioration in her mental health and claims by her that the father put his hands around her throat. The father denies this.<\/p>\n
In a judgment delivered on Friday, Simons said District Court judge Stephanie Coggans refused the child\u2019s request to speak directly with her and sarcastically commented that the girl would say her mother was \u201cbrilliant\u201d and \u201ceveryone else is awful\u201d. Simons said Coggans made a series of premature assumptions that were all hostile to the mother.<\/p>\n
The separated mother and father\u2019s relationship has been marked by \u201csignificant conflict\u201d, said Simons. The mother alleged a history of domestic abuse and coercive control, which the father denies, save for having been convicted of breaching a safety order some years ago. The judge said the breaches involved him sending threatening messages to the woman.<\/p>\n
At the District Court parental access hearing before Coggans last autumn, the mother alleged a recent deterioration in the girl\u2019s mental health, self-harm, suicidal ideation and continued opposition to contact with the father. The father alleged his daughter\u2019s opposition to seeing him was influenced by the mother and maternal family members.<\/p>\n
The judge declined to hear from the maternal grandfather, as she said he would not say \u201canything supportive of anybody other than the mother\u201d.<\/p>\n
Simons said Coggans expressed adverse views during the hearing about the mother\u2019s credibility and her responsibility for the girl\u2019s condition. He said Coggans threatened to transfer custody of the girl if the father\u2019s access did not take place. He said the mother was also told: \u201cIf you don\u2019t stop it, I\u2019ll consider taking custody off you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge had first raised the possibility of transferring custody before the father gave evidence at the hearing, giving rise to the appearance of premature judgment, he said. <\/p>\n
These warnings must be viewed alongside the other deficiencies with the hearing, he said, including that the child\u2019s contemporary views had not been considered and the mother had been restricted in producing evidence to support her explanation for the child\u2019s opposition to contact with the father.<\/p>\n
It would have been appropriate for the court to consider whether the child\u2019s views had been unduly influenced, but that did not mean there was no useful purpose in hearing from her, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntemperate and vulgar language\u201d was used during the hearing, including descriptions of the mother and father as \u201cbad parents\u201d, said Simons. The District Court judge said the child was having to deal with \u201cthis s**t\u201d and attributed responsibility to the mother, he said. The judge later directed the woman to sit down because she was \u201cdone\u201d with her, Simons added.<\/p>\n
Coggans made orders providing for the father to have access to his daughter for five hours every alternate weekend. She discharged a protection order the mother had against him, saying he was \u201cnot going to come out and beat the head off\u201d her.<\/p>\n
Ruling on the mother\u2019s challenge to these orders, Simons said the District Court hearing was \u201cfundamentally flawed\u201d. The constitutional requirement to ascertain the child\u2019s views was not met, while there were also errors with the decision-making process and there was a denial of justice to the child and mother, he held. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge who threatened to remove a mother\u2019s custody of her daughter has been found to have conducted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[19620,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,1109,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-632393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-bob","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-media","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117080107767559195","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}