Bowing to the Exclusive Bretheren

I was reading the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) over my corn flakes this morning when I suddenly gagged and coughed milk and corn flakes all over the newspaper.
The article that I gagged on was by David Marr about a Tasmanian mans fight for access to his children in the Family Court.
The man and his wife were both in the Exclusive Bretheren with their 8 children. The man left the sect in 2003 and subsequently lost access to his children. At that time 3 of his children were of child age and he started Family Court action to get access to the 3 children.
Quoting from the SMH.
"After a three-year battle in the Family Court, he was granted limited access to the two youngest. In a 100-page judgment, Justice Robert Benjamin declared the steps taken by the Brethren to discourage the children from seeing their father "psychologically cruel, unacceptable and abusive".
Access started in 2007. After the visits to their father, the children allegedly wrote heartbreaking letters objecting to their visits. The sect deny that they coach children to write letters of protest.
This court action was vigorously opposed by the mother and of course the church. The mother, one of her children (I assume was one of the adult children) and one of the children in law were threatened with prison for failing to facilitate access.
The mother used the leading family law silk Noel Ackman plus a supporting legal team. You would of course expect the sect to pay for the court action but they deny this and say individual members have given the mother money for the court action. Pigs fly as well.
The father was broke spending $100,000 on the 5 years of litigation.
This story is now more complex with the mother now being diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. The family allegedly blamed the father for the cancer. How cruel and totally lacking in any logic are these people.
Now it continues with the father wanting new access plus custody of the youngest child. The mother wants the ex husband to have no custody in the event of her death.
Now this is what made me gag.
Quoting from the SMH.
"Justice Sally Brown declared the faith of the children the "crucial factor" in the case and sided with the mother and the church. She took no account of the sect's long history of trouble with the Family Court and did not address the role the Brethren had played - and may still be playing - in the extreme hostility of the children to visiting their father. The hostility was to be honoured: "It is not realistic to expect them to go against the … teaching of their church. Though she found Peter was a loving father with a comfortable home in which children could live, she birched him for his attitude to the sect; for embarrassing his children by putting birthday greetings in newspapers; for seeking custody of only one child and not two; and for claiming the Brethren had robbed his children of autonomy. Wasn't his own departure, she asked, proof the sect allowed debate and dissent? But he was 46 when he left and his children are 15 and 10. In a remarkable finding by a Family Court judge, Peter was even castigated for seeking to enforce the earlier orders of the court. A door that had been ajar was shut, said the judge. "The continuation of the litigation after [the mother's] diagnosis in May 2007 has driven both children from their father. In their best interests, the litigation must end."
The father has now lost any chance of custody and has lost all access.
Quoting the SMH again.
"It may be that viewing this terrible and tangled situation, Justice Brown found a fair and secular outcome just too hard - too hard on the children, too hard on their dying mother, too hard in the face of the implacable hostility of the Brethren.
But her decision has reward the sect's intransigence. Once again the Family Court has flinched.
Athol Greene insists these cases are rare and that the church will submit to the law while continuing to argue that the best outcome for these children is to remain solely within the Brethren.
"You won't change us," he says, fixing me with his old eyes. "You. Won't. Change. Us.""
How horrid is this, I could not believe that the Family Court would fold to the demands of a cruel sect that separates families because one parent is not a part of the sect.
We need individual rights, maybe a Bill of Rights that can overide this madness.
This has saddened me greatly.
Exclusive Bretheren SMH article