“THE DOMINION”
Wellington, New Zealand.
Tuesday, 4 December 2001.
Features Story

Give me back my children

Leah Haines talks to a father cut off from his young family after accusations of sexual abuse

The man we can only refer to as X reckons he has lived life by three simple rules: do unto others as you would have them do unto you; like the man you see in the mirror each morning; and don't worry about things you can't do anything about.

The Rules, he smiles, have helped make this quietly spoken tradesman into a person he describes as the "nicest man I know".

But when you look at X's story, it is hard to see how he has stuck to any of them.

Some years ago, with no warning, his ex-wife accused him of sexually abusing their children. With no evidence that he had, and at a time when his young children still loved and wanted to see him, he was shut out of their lives.

He has never been convicted of abuse or even charged – despite police investigation.

He was never told what horrible things he was supposed to have done to his children and, since Father's Day many years ago, has never seen his children again.

Five times he has battled in the Family Court to get access to them. It has cost him $82,000 and each time he has failed.

In the meantime, his children have almost grown up and certainly grown out of the tiny faces, frozen in time, that smile out of the last photos he was allowed, that decorate the walls of his home.

Now, despite the fact that they don't ever want to see him, X's repeated claims of innocence may have been vindicated.

On November 12, Prue Vincent, the psychologist who worked with his children for six years, admitted two charges of conduct unbecoming in relation to the children. It was during sessions with the children that the children claimed they had been abused.

One of Wellington's most experienced family court psychologists, Ms Vincent was once the head of Social Welfare's psychologist team, and is considered a leading expert on child sex abuse.

She has been fined $5000 and censured by the Psychologists Board and, to X's amazement, allowed to keep practising.

Yet in the opinion of other psychologists and family law experts who have read the charges, she broke almost every basic rule in the book.

She asked leading questions such as "Did Daddy do such and such?" gave books about family sex abuse to the children's mother to read to them and, despite advances in psychology, never questioned that her earlier methods might have been wrong.

For the six years she was involved with the children, Ms Vincent did not interview X or observe him with his kids. Instead, the charges state, she accepted "without question" his ex-wife's testimony while telling X to put his rebuttals in writing.

Exactly what that all means, what Ms Vincent did wrong according to contemporary psychological practices, how it may have affected the children and unreliability to show that X had done anything wrong, filled dozens of pages.

It makes gripping reading.

But because of a veil of secrecy typical of the Family Court, X's access hearing judgment, and all evidence presented at the hearing, have been suppressed.

Not only are those details secret: Ms Vincent's hearing before the Psychologists Board was also held in private and the names of those it disciplines are not routinely published.

In fact, had this story never been written, only a handful of people would have known that Ms Vincent had done anything wrong.

Determined that she "not make a career out of this", X flew to Wellington to be at the board's hearing in an endeavour to make sure she got struck off the psychologists' register.

Instead, he was told not to bother – she had pleaded guilty to the charges days before the hearing and he was not needed.

Furious that she had been allowed to keep practising and describing the board as "impotent" X turned to The Dominion.

"I know I can't do anything about the fact that I believe she's destroyed the relationship between myself and my children, but I'd like to be able to prevent her from, to stop her from, being able to do it to anyone else."

The Psychologists Board confirmed nine members had been struck off the register for a "serious charge" since 1981.

According to The Dominion's files, two had been struck off since 1995 – one for sexually inappropriate behaviour with a client and the other for fraud.

X considers his case is far worse.

"They're basically burning me at the stake with no evidence. She has robbed my children of their innocence and of a very good daddy.

"We had a good relationship. I am a good father. My friends have got absolutely no concerns about me. I get asked to babysit for them. That's a huge ask, really."

It was just before Peter Ellis was tried on 16 charges of sex abuse against children at the Christchurch Civic Creche that X's ex-wife first told a social worker she suspected one of her children had been abused.

The social worker referred her to Prue Vincent. That was in 1993, and the world was in the grip of a moral panic about ritualistic abuse and "recovered memory" of past sexual abuse.

On Father's Day that year, X went to pick up his children for their regular weekend visit and was met instead by his ex-wife, without the children.

"She said that she knew what I had done, that I was the biggest bastard on the face of their Earth and I was not allowed to see my children again," X remembers. "Father's day. A bit poetic." Then, when he began fighting for access in the court, X found Ms Vincent continued to work with the children in her new role as a Family Court-appointed psychologist.

X considers that a blatant conflict of interest.

The board charged her with not handling the "transition" between the roles properly.

Now he is convinced his children were never abused, but made up stories in self-defence, confused and stressed after being subjected to more than a dozen interviews with Ms Vincent and a psychotherapist.

The former head of the Psychologists Board, Barry Parsonson, would not discuss Ms Vincent, fearing this would breach suppression orders. However, asked about the dangers inherent in some of the abstract charges she had faced, he commented on how "particularly difficult" it was to interview children under five.

"You have to be so careful," Dr Parsonson stressed. "Even up to the age of eight and nine, they are so suggestive. The psychologist does not want to be adding confusion to the information by adding suggestive comments."

Victoria University psychology lecturer Maryanne Garry went further, saying even adults exposed to the leading questions and number of interviews that X's children were, could have their memories distorted.

And Dr Parsonson, one of the country's top psychologists, suggests the Family Court is not beyond reproach in terms of the justice it delivers to non- custodial parents.

While the criminal court requires evidence that an offence has taken place, under the Guardianship Act, the Family Court needs only to be satisfied there is a "real risk to the safety of the child" to exclude a parent from access.

Even when a custodial parent thinks a child would be unsafe with the other parent, the court is required to err on the side of caution.

Sometimes, Dr Parsonson says, because of the amount of time it takes for parents to battle the court for custody, and knowing the effect those battles have on their children, parents just give up.

Even with the risk X poses now seriously in doubt, X says he has been prevented from playing any part in his children's lives. Not even to send them presents.

He says they don't want to know him. He suspects they don't know anything about him.

Nevertheless, he is angry that no one in the Family Court system is prepared to help his family reconcile.

"It's too hard. The Family Court doesn't have a system for an innocent accused man to see his kids."

The bitter irony for X is that if he confessed to abusing his children he could eventually have access to them, through programmes run by the criminal justice system.

"I am not guilty and I am not prepared to say I am to have access."

Nor is he interested in aligning himself with angry men's groups which have been pushing for an opening of the Family Court claiming the system is sexist and anti-men. The groups have a victim mentality that he hates. But he is not convinced that the Family Court system, closed to review or criticism, has it right, either.

Family law expert and dean of law at Otago University, Mark Heneghan, says X's case is a prime example of why the Family Court should be opened to public and media scrutiny.

"I feel if nothing is done, then these bloody issues will keep coming up."

X's case should fuel the call for a judicial review of the Family Court, Professor Heneghan says.

Until it does, he believes defence lawyers should and probably would object to Ms Vincent attending any case they are involved in. "Any case," Professor Heneghan stressed. "Let alone sex abuse."

Meanwhile, X flew back to his new wife, a surprisingly happy life and a house full of Christmas and birthday presents that he has wrapped for his children every year.

"I want them to know one day that I do love them and that I cared about them and thought about them," he says, fighting tears for the first time in the interview.

And if X's children do ever want to get to know him, if, once they turn 16, they ever knock on his door wondering who their father is, he wants them to find a good, happy, together man.

"A well-liked man," he smiles, "who's got lots of friends, because I have . . . That's one of the reasons why I've got on with things – I don't want them to find a snivelling wreck when they knock at the door. I want them to find me."