THE Family Court has removed a five-year-old boy from the care of his mother because she is living with a man whose own child, a daughter, died of neglect in a house with an "atrocious standard of hygiene".

Caroline Overington | October 19, 2009

The decision has delighted the five-year-old's father, who successfully argued that his son would be at serious risk of harm if forced to live with a man whose child had died in his care.

The action has also been welcomed by fathers' rights groups, who have long argued that young children are more at risk from a mother's new partner than from their biological fathers.

The case, known as Muller and Shaw, has been before the courts for more than a year. The child, known only as D, was aged 4 at the time of the last hearing.

His mother had been his primary carer since he was six months old but the court has ordered that he live with his father and see his mother every other weekend and on school holidays, and never in the presence of her new partner. An appeal by the mother failed last Wednesday.

The court said the mother's relationship with her new partner, known only as Mr T, was a "significant feature of its decision".

The mother, 25, and the father, 33, lived together for less than a year. Their only child, a son, was born in February 2004. The relationship was over by August 2004. The father, Mr Shaw, had contact with the child three or four days a week, for up to two hours at time, until February 2006, when the mother started a de facto relationship with Mr T.

In January 2006 -- that is, just a month earlier -- one of Mr T's children, a girl, died while in his care.

Court documents do not reveal how the child died but a South Australian judge put Mr T's three surviving children into state care, giving him only supervised access to them.

A witness from Families SA, the government department that deals with child welfare in South Australia, said the cause of death was "neglect".

When Mr Shaw became aware of the relationship between the mother of his child and Mr T, he began proceedings in the Family Law division of the Federal Magistrates Court.

A magistrate at first restrained the mother from leaving the child alone in the care of Mr T, and banned Mr T from staying overnight at the mother's house when the child was there.

Mr Shaw went back to court after amassing evidence that the mother was flouting these restrictions, at which point the court gave him custody of the child.

The mother appealed, saying the court had not taken into account the effect on the child of having such a radical change in his living arrangements. She also argued that she was not in a de facto relationship with Mr T.

The court believed the father, saying he was a "truthful witness" who was "vitally concerned with the health and safety of his son".


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26228004-5013404,00.html





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