Latest / The Post-Separation Abuse Podcast / 61. The System that Fails Children: Part 1 - The professionals who can't identify abuse and why our children are paying the price

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61. The System that Fails Children: Part 1 - The professionals who can't identify abuse and why our children are paying the price · The Post-Separation Abuse Podcast

• 0:00
  Danielle Black: Hello and welcome back to the Post-Separation Abuse Podcast.
• 0:04
  Danielle Black: I'm your host, danielle Black.
• 0:06
  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?
• 0:16
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 0:28
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 0:37
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 1:00
  Danielle Black: Before we go further, let me be crystal clear this is not anti-father content.
• 1:05
  Danielle Black: I'm a happily married woman.
• 1:08
  Danielle Black: My husband is a brilliant and involved dad.
• 1:10
  Danielle Black: This conversation is about protecting all kids from all harmful parenting, no matter which parent it comes from.
• 1:18
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 1:30
  Danielle Black: In this episode we'll unpack the University of Queensland research showing the serious mental health risks for children exposed to coercive control.
• 1:38
  Danielle Black: The evidence of how family court professionals keep failing to identify these patterns.
• 1:43
  Danielle Black: Why calling documented abuse quote conflict isn't neutral, it's negligent.
• 1:49
  Danielle Black: How this incompetence fuels systemic harm in the family court system, and what this might mean for your case.
• 1:56
  Danielle Black: In 2025, researchers at the University of Queensland published a landmark paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
• 2:03
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 2:21
  Danielle Black: And here's the big one.
• 2:22
  Danielle Black: Intimidation and control, including harm to pets.
• 2:26
  Danielle Black: And here's the big one intimidation and control, what we now recognize as coercive control.
• 2:28
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 2:36
  Danielle Black: And intimidation and control, so coercive control, was the single strongest predictor.
• 2:42
  Danielle Black: Specifically, exposure to intimidation and control was linked with about a 2.3-fold increase in the odds of PTSD.
• 2:51
  Danielle Black: Think about that more than double the likelihood of lasting trauma.
• 2:56
  Danielle Black: And it doesn't stop at PTSD.
• 2:58
  Danielle Black: Women exposed as children had the highest rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidality.
• 3:04
  Danielle Black: Men showed higher rates of alcohol and substance disorders.
• 3:08
  Danielle Black: Coercive control is not soft abuse.
• 3:11
  Danielle Black: It's not quote just conflict.
• 3:14
  Danielle Black: This is documented trauma with lifelong mental health consequences.
• 3:19
  Danielle Black: Dr Blake's team did not mince words about where coercive control continues.
• 3:25
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 3:36
  Danielle Black: This is what happens when coercive control keeps running through the very system that is designed to protect our kids.
• 3:44
  Danielle Black: Dr Blake made the point clearly, quote it's no longer appropriate to measure domestic violence without accounting for coercive control.
• 3:52
  Danielle Black: End quote.
• 3:53
  Danielle Black: And yet that's exactly what is happening every day in family courts across Australia.
• 3:59
  Danielle Black: Now you might be thinking surely family court professionals are trying to pick this up.
• 4:04
  Danielle Black: Unfortunately, the research says otherwise.
• 4:07
  Danielle Black: In 2021, the Attorney General's Department asked stakeholders how to improve family report writer competency and the answers were damning.
• 4:16
  Danielle Black: Professionals urgently need training in family violence, trauma-informed practice, working with children and, yes, coercive control.
• 4:25
  Danielle Black: So let's think about that for a moment.
• 4:27
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 4:47
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 4:59
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 5:10
  Danielle Black: Legal professionals interviewed in the study admitted that abuse was often minimised, dismissed or even completely ignored in reports.
• 5:19
  Danielle Black: One said quote sometimes they leave out the most atrocious violence.
• 5:25
  Danielle Black: They don't want to recognize it.
• 5:27
  Danielle Black: End quote.
• 5:29
  Danielle Black: This is not neutral.
• 5:30
  Danielle Black: This is systematic failure.
• 5:33
  Danielle Black: And when coercive control is missed, what does it get called?
• 5:37
  Danielle Black: Conflict or high conflict or communication difficulties?
• 5:43
  Danielle Black: But when professionals reframe abuse as conflict, they erase responsibility, they blame both parents equally and they put kids into unsafe parenting arrangements.
• 5:56
  Danielle Black: But professional incompetence does not happen in a vacuum.
• 6:00
  Danielle Black: It creates a systematic weaponization of the entire family court system against protective parents and children.
• 6:08
  Danielle Black: Here's how it works A family ends up in the court system because there's disagreement about the post-separation parenting arrangements.
• 6:16
  Danielle Black: The court orders a child impact report or a family report from a quote expert family.
• 6:22
  Danielle Black: Then the incompetent professional fails to identify coercive control.
• 6:27
  Danielle Black: Rather, it gets labelled as quote conflict.
• 6:31
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 6:54
  Danielle Black: Protective parents then feel forced to consent to arrangements that they know are harmful and children are placed in danger without judicial oversight.
• 7:03
  Danielle Black: Finally, the perpetrator is emboldened by the expert validation when family report writers can't identify coercive control.
• 7:13
  Danielle Black: They don't just write bad reports with bad recommendations, they're handing perpetrators a weapon.
• 7:20
  Danielle Black: That report becomes the basis for lawyers to pressure protective parents.
• 7:24
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 7:40
  Danielle Black: This isn't legal advice.
• 7:42
  Danielle Black: This is systemic coercion enabled by professional incompetence.
• 7:48
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 8:07
  Danielle Black: Legal aid clients in Australia face an even more dire situation.
• 8:12
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 8:43
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 8:58
  Danielle Black: Sometimes cross-examination will unpack what's really been happening.
• 9:03
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 9:13
  Danielle Black: What we have in this country with family law is class-based discrimination.
• 9:18
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 9:27
  Danielle Black: Wealthy families can challenge professional incompetence, albeit at oftentimes a devastating cost, but families with economic struggles are forced to accept it.
• 9:37
  Danielle Black: This means that your income determines whether your children deserve protection from abuse patterns that research proves cause higher PTSD rates, among other harms.
• 9:49
  Danielle Black: When incompetent reports validate perpetrators, they become relentless in pursuing maximum time because the professional expert supports their position.
• 9:59
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 10:09
  Danielle Black: Often what they're seeking is equal, shared parenting time.
• 10:13
  Danielle Black: So how do you protect your kids when the professionals making the decisions about their safety lack basic competence in identifying abuse?
• 10:23
  Danielle Black: First you start asking the right questions.
• 10:26
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 10:40
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 10:53
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 11:04
  Danielle Black: This University of Queensland research is your evidence base.
• 11:07
  Danielle Black: When professionals dismiss coercive control as quote just conflict, you now have proof that these patterns cause measurable psychological damage to children.
• 11:18
  Danielle Black: You can confidently state you've described this as conflict.
• 11:22
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 11:45
  Danielle Black: Shouldn't you be assessing this as potential abuse rather than conflict?
• 11:50
  Danielle Black: Here's the truth.
• 11:51
  Danielle Black: When family court professionals label coercive control as mere conflict, they're not being neutral, they're being negligent.
• 12:00
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 12:19
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 12:33
  Danielle Black: But how did we get here?
• 12:34
  Danielle Black: This lack of professional competence didn't happen overnight.
• 12:38
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 12:51
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 13:23
  Danielle Black: I've created several free resources that directly address what we've discussed today the Post-Separation Abuse Checklist and Workbook.
• 13:30
  Danielle Black: This is incredibly relevant to today's episode.
• 13:33
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 13:46
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 13:56
  Danielle Black: There's the capacity challenge.
• 13:58
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 14:11
  Danielle Black: And the five most common mistakes that parents make in early separation.
• 14:15
  Danielle Black: This guide and mini private podcast episode are available for people who sign up to the wait list for the post-separation parenting blueprint.
• 14:26
  Danielle Black: This mini guide helps you to avoid the traps that can undermine your case before you even get to the family report stage.
• 14:33
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 14:44
  Danielle Black: All of these resources are completely free available on my website.
• 14:49
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 15:00
  Danielle Black: This is what I'm supporting my clients with every day.
• 15:04
  Danielle Black: This is what I've been supporting protective parents with for the past five years.
• 15:08
  Danielle Black: Remember, none of this is about being difficult or demanding.
• 15:12
  Danielle Black: 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.
• 15:31
  Danielle Black: That's not too much to ask.
• 15:33
  Danielle Black: It's the absolute minimum that we should be expecting.
• 15:36
  Danielle Black: So get those free resources, start asking the hard questions and keep fighting for what the evidence shows our kids need.
• 15:44
  Danielle Black: Thank you so much for being here with me.
• 15:47
  Danielle Black: I'll look forward to chatting with you soon.