Child and Family Advocacy Centre (CFAC) and information sharing

The following is an EXTRACT ONLY – Click here to download and read the full document

Safeguarding People Australia (SPA)

Overview – Hetty Johnston AM GAICD

Safeguarding People Australia · 2025

I have been advocating for the introduction of CFACs – Child and Family Advocacy Centres – into Australia since 2016, in a campaign I started whilst at Bravehearts and continue with today. We simply must respond appropriately to the increasing prevalence of child abuse and harm.

Prevalence of Child Abuse

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS 2023), has found child Maltreatment is widespread among Australians. 32% experienced Physical Abuse, over 1 in 4 children (28.5%) experienced sexual abuse, 30.9% emotional abuse, 8.9% neglect and 39.6% experienced exposure to domestic violence. https://www.acms.au/
Almost 1 in 10 Australians experienced forced sex in childhood (8.7%); Mathews, Pacella, Scott, et al., 2023).

The Offenders

Around one in six (15.1%) Australian men reports sexual feelings towards children. Around one in ten (9.4%) Australian men HAS sexually offended against children. Identifying and understanding child sexual offending behaviour and attitudes among Australian men.pdf (Salter etal 2023)
A study of child sexual abuse material survivors found 42% were abused by their father or stepfather, meaning abuse prevention and education services cannot assume all parents protect children in their care. (Salter, Woodlock, Whitten et al., 2023)

False Allegations

Academic findings place false allegations of sexual abuse from children at just 2.5% to 5%. In children under 6 years of age, this falls to 2% (Oates et al. 2000; Everson & Boat 1989).

These research findings drive my ongoing passion to address what I believe are the most pressing issues in Australia: the failure of the current Federal and State statutory, regulatory and judicial systems to effectively unite in response to the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse of Australian children, their protective parents, vulnerable adults, and women and children experiencing domestic violence — including murder and filicide.

Note: Whilst child sexual abuse is the focus of this paper, proposals and assessments raised here equally apply to the current response to domestic violence and to other vulnerable cohorts such as the elderly and adults with communicative and cognitive disabilities.

The systemic failure in ‘preventive safeguarding’ begins the moment the child or vulnerable adult becomes reliant on government regulated services, systems, organisations, legislations and regulations to keep them safe.
The systemic ‘response’ failures become more apparent the moment the child or protective parent (or other vulnerable adult) finds the courage to disclose and seek help. It is at this point State Police or regulatory bodies are contacted and, it is at this point that the looming catastrophic systemic failures are
at its most avoidable ……. and most repairable.

The two legitimate legal tests used by Courts to determine guilt / responsibility / liability are:

1. ‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ in the criminal systems, and

2. ‘Balance of Probabilities’ in the civil systems – including the Family Courts.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt is the highest legal test. It means that the evidence presented in court must be so strong and convincing that there is no other logical explanation for the events in question.

Balance of Probabilities is the lesser test and is used in civil Courts including the Family Courts. This purports to means that in a civil trial, the plaintiff only needs to prove that it is more likely than not (51%) that the defendant is liable for the claim made against them.

Recognition of harm There is another test applied outside courts in matters of Redress Schemes which does not seek to find guilt on the part of the nominated alleged perpetrators but rather sufficient evidence that abuse occurred. The primary aim being to provide compensation for the victim. This
forms the legal framework for redress schemes, ensuring that those affected receive recognition and compensation for their experiences.

The current system of determination for criminal matters totally disregards any Balance of Probabilities evidence that does not form part of the factual evidence required to achieve a criminal conviction.

Other intelligence gathering such as witnesses, disclosures of children to third parties, disclosures to redress schemes, disciplinary action by regulatory authorities etc are routinely not sufficient for police to use in pursuit of a criminal conviction.

Police must only focus on achieving evidence to support a determination of Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Police interviewing processes reflect that goal and do not deliberately seek out the wider Balance of Probabilities collective environmental evidence. Environment evidence, meaning other forms of intelligence gathering or the use of other information gathered by regulatory bodies etc, that fail to assist police to reach the criminal threshold of Beyond Reasonable Doubt. This form of information will likely not be shared and may not even be retained.

Too, the decision to proceed in a matter for Department of Prosecutions (DPP) is independent of Police achieving their designated goal of Beyond Reasonable Doubt and is based on two questions:

As such, complainants of criminality, such as sexual abuse, domestic violence etc must seek ‘justice’ by contacting Police and making a complaint. Investigations must result in sufficient evidence to support Beyond Reasonable Doubt. Failure to achieve this results in discontinuance by police, DPP and the Courts. However we know that:

Only one in five (21.6%) of matters brought to police proceeded beyond the investigation stage. The overall estimate is that only 12% of offences reported to police resulted in a conviction, at a relatively stable rate over 14 years. These findings are consistent with those of comparable studies. Fourteen-Year Trends in the Criminal Justice Response to Child Sexual Abuse Reports in New South Wales – Judith Cashmore, Alan Taylor, Patrick Parkinson, 2020

Any evidence or testimony which might support a finding of Balance of Probabilities is siloed or discarded once a matter is discontinued by Police or unsuccessful (88% of complaints). This is because recording, managing or reporting this information, and any Balance of Probabilities assessment by Police or DPP, is outside of their roles.

There is currently no systemic process to capture and use this information to inform a potential Civil Court Balance of Probabilities finding. The current criminal system discards, silo’s or ignores opportunities for contributing to profile building intelligence that would, over time, identify repeat offenders and be used by other systemic processes such as family courts, working with children checks, reportable conduct schemes etc.

In the current system, at the very same time a matter is discontinued the Balance of Probabilities evidence is siloed or disregarded, and any hope for justice and protection for the victim and those who protect them is likewise disregarded.

The current system of determination for Family Law matters

Civil Law in Australia governs Family law issues, including divorce, child custody, and spousal support.

Criminal convictions of abuse in States and Territories will factor heavily in the Family Courts decisions around child custody. However, unless the criminal legal system has achieved a guilty verdict the matter is treated as ‘unsubstantiated’ by the child protection and family court systems, regardless of the veracity of the Beyond Reasonable Doubt evidence. This is the most common scenario. Without access to independent, reliable systemic evidence, allegations of child sexual assault/abuse will be difficult, if not impossible, to be taken seriously in the Family Court.

This is largely because the current system of reporting crimes to Police provides no systemic process to assess the civil court evidentiary test- the Balance of Probabilities evidence – at the time of the disclosure, that is, when the incident/s occurred or when it was reported. This is the optimum time to conduct both Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Balance of Probabilities assessments. As a result, independent and time sensitive Balance of Probabilities evidence and assessment is not presented to the Family Court in a timely or meaningful way because the collation of such is not part of any existing expert independent investigatory process from the outset.

There are numerous tools available within the Family Law Rules to assist in the gathering of evidence in preparation for family law proceedings but these are all conducted well into the timeline of the matter, sometimes years. They are not independent, potentially biased and usually prepared for the benefit of
one party or the other. They are expensive and time consuming to gather and present to the court, they lack independence and they rarely tell the whole story.

The above is an EXTRACT ONLY – Click here to download and read the full document