Rosie Batty Emotionally Appeals to Fix 'Broken System' at Family Court Inquiry

Domestic violence awareness advocate Rosie Batty answered questions at a parliamentary inquiry into family law and family violence on Monday, July 24, giving an emotional plea to fix a system she said was harming women and children.

“We are on the front lines dealing with the thousands of people who contact us every day wanting help, help that we can’t give them,” Batty, who is the Luke Batty Foundation chief executive, said in an opening statement. “We can’t convey strongly enough how broken this system is. It’s unimaginable.”

Batty claimed in her opening statement that the family court system was “broken” in Australia and said it was “another avenue for the abuse to continue.”

“Imagine you are a victim of violence and having to negotiate a form of mediation across the table from your perpetrator, face to face in the same room and without a lawyer – without a lawyer – because they can’t afford legal representation,” she said.

One woman is murdered every week at the hands of her partner, and one in three women over 15 are victims of violence or will experience violence in their lifetimes, according to advocacy group Our Watch.

“The one thing I feel we need to prioritise is the unconscious bias, the cultural attitudes towards women that somehow influences the outcome through this court system – it’s largely unconscious, but it is a bias. I know that most people think that women turn the children against their fathers and mostly the fathers are hard done by. I don’t know where we get that impression from,” Batty, whose son Luke was murdered by his father, told the inquiry.

According to the Huffington Post the purpose of the inquiry is to question some aspects of the legal system, including how in Family Court alleged perpetrators of domestic violence or sexual assault are allowed to cross examine their alleged victims.

A Committee of the Australian Parliament adopted the inquiry in March 2017.

Representatives from 10 organisations in the family and domestic violence space were scheduled to deliver statements at the inquiry’s public hearing on Monday. Credit: Luke Batty Foundation via Storyful