Shane's personal story

My son was in a similar position re violent wife. Once when he was being attacked after many occasions he rang the police for help. They came took the wife and 2 children away to the wife's violent sisters place.

She was eventually put in contact with crisis people who would not listen to either my son or my wife's side of the story.

My son was denied access to the children for about 3 months until he employed a lawyer at considerable expense.

My son's wife also would take psychotic turns and completely ignore the children for up to 3 days at a time. On one of these violent turns she slammed the door on one of the children's hand which was badly damaged and had to be taken to hospital. During the time of these psychotic turns my wife would have to go and care for the children.

My son and us tried to get help for her with a number of Community Services Child Protection, marriage counsellors, mental health and so on. All went to speak with her but because of her Chinese heritage she would not admit she had a problem because she would lose face with the family so would not accept help.

They were only married for 4 years 11 months. She brought nothing into the marriage, but family law apparently says she is entitled to half my son's assets and his super and all the blame is put on him and the family law apparently takes all his rights away but the violent wife is not penalised one bit.

We applied for legal aid and were rejected because we had more than $2000.00 in the bank. My son's wife applied for legal aid and was given this, despite her having withdrawn a considerable amount of money out of their joint account and then having closed it. She hid the money so it did not show up in her bank account.

We advised her lawyer of this but no action was taken. He continued to act for her.

I think that the family laws are very unreasonable in some cases especially when the male is the victim and all rights are given to the female.