Bates & Bates

[2008] FamCA 1172

FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA

BATES & BATES [2008] FamCA 1172

FAMILY LAW – CHILDREN – INTERIM ORDERS – Allegations against father of sexual interference with child – mother previously supervising time between father and children – mother no longer willing to supervise – the benefit to the children of having a meaningful relationship with their father pending final hearing – whether there is any unacceptable risk in the children spending time with the father – arrangements made for the father’s partner to supervise time with the children

Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)

M v M (1988) CLR (1988) 166 CLR 69
B v B (1988) 82 ALR 584
P v S, unreported, 13 August 1997
Briginshaw v Briginshaw (1938) 60 CLR 366
Godfrey & Sanders (1997) 208 FLR 287

APPLICANT: Mr Bates

RESPONDENT: Ms Bates

INDEPENDENT CHILDREN’S LAWYER: Ms Burgess

FILE NUMBER: PAC 6496 of 2007

DATE DELIVERED: 27 August 2008

PLACE DELIVERED: Canberra

PLACE HEARD: Canberra

JUDGMENT OF: Faulks DCJ

HEARING DATE: 27 August 2008

REPRESENTATION

COUNSEL FOR THE APPLICANT:

SOLICITOR FOR THE APPLICANT: SELF-REPRESENTED

COUNSEL FOR THE RESPONDENT:

SOLICITOR FOR THE RESPONDENT: MR HOWARD

COUNSEL FOR THE INDEPENDENT CHILDREN’S LAWYER:

SOLICITOR FOR THE INDEPENDENT CHILDREN’S LAWYER: MS BURGESS

IT IS NOTED that publication of this judgment under the pseudonym Bates & Bates is approved pursuant to s 121(9)(g) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)

FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA AT CANBERRA

FILE NUMBER: PAC 6496 of 2007

MR BATES

Applicant

And

MS BATES

Respondent

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

1. In this matter the proceedings before the Court relate to the arrangements that will exist until the finalisation of the proceedings before the Court.  The final proceedings are about where the children are to live and the form of the relationship they will have with each of their parents.  In a shorthand way, this decision  relates to the interim arrangements about the time the children will spend with their father.

2. The competing proposals, taken at their extreme, of each of the parents are these.  On the part of the father, he seeks that he be able to have the children every third weekend from Saturday morning until Sunday evening and that the time that he spends with the children should be in the presence of his partner.  She filed an affidavit in the Court on 14 August in which she deposes to certain things to which I will return in due course.

3. At the other end of the scale, the children's mother says that the father should only spend time with the children in the presence of her parents in Canberra for a period of four and a half hours once a month.  Further, she seeks that this be a transitional move until such time as professional supervision can be arranged, possibly through Marymead or through some other agency.  [If that supervision were conducted by Marymead, the children’s time with the father would then apparently become two hours every two weeks rather than four hours every month.]

4. There are other possibilities in between those proposals which include that arranged or sought out by the Independent Children's Lawyer that there could be some professional supervision of the father with the children in B at a cost of about $300 on each occasion.  Money is of significance to the parties, and to some extent, so is travel.  The mother has indicated that she would find it difficult to drive to Sydney on a regular basis, and moreover, the car she has is less reliable than that of the father.

5. The grandparents of the children, if they were to be supervisors, would be obliged to travel for some four hours or more from G to Canberra to carry out the supervision.  Consequently, it is not as though they can just drop what they are doing at their home and take over this task at short notice.  The availability of professional supervision - either Marymead's Contact Program, or in other places - is not clear and certainly not presently available.

6. These are interim proceedings and the orders that I make are designed to ensure that a number of things are preserved until a final hearing can occur.  The proceedings have been designated as proceedings under the Magellan program of the Court because of the allegation of sexual abuse that has been the centrepiece for most of the disputes between the parties.

7. The process whereby a finalisation of these proceedings can be achieved will involve some intervention in the short-term by a professional expert witness who will have to assess the relationship between each of the parties and the children and between the children themselves.  This will provide me with some assistance about what might be the orders that I could make in the best interests of the children in due course.  The proceedings are not about what is fair for each parent or not about what each parent thinks are his or her rights; they are about the rights of the children and in particular the rights of the children to have, [so far as it would be of benefit to them], a meaningful relationship with each of their parents.

8. That, of course, does not mean that at any cost the children will spend time with each of their parents; nor that the time they spend with a parent will necessarily be meaningful; nor that the time they spend with their parents will necessarily operate for their best interests.  Nevertheless, the Act requires that in accordance with the provisions of Part VII I am to regard their best interests as my paramount consideration and that in arriving at that consideration I am to take account of a number of different matters.  This is so even in the course of interim proceedings - perhaps more particularly in interim proceedings - where all of the relevant evidence is not before the Court.  In interim proceedings, I must therefore make a decision based on relatively untested evidence in circumstances where, in some cases, it is hastily prepared and in some cases not in a form which would ordinarily be acceptable as evidence.

9. In determining what is in a child's best interests I set to one side - although I do not disregard - the presumption that applies under the Act that the parents should share equally parental responsibility subject to a number of other matters.  These are interim proceedings and it is inappropriate [in the circumstances of this matter at this time] that the presumption should apply.  Even if it were appropriate (in the general sense) that it should apply, it is not appropriate to apply it to these parties, particularly in the circumstances that presently exist where the children have been living primarily with their mother and only having supervised time with their father now for some time.

10. However, that certainly does not relieve me of the primary obligation that I should make a determination of what's in the children's best interests by reference to, among other things, the provisions of s 60CC of the Act.  The Act and its amendments that came into effect as of 1 July 2006 provide that the considerations I am to take into account are broadly divided into two categories. The first is the primary considerations - whatever "primary" may in this context mean - and then there are “additional considerations”. 

11. The first of the primary considerations is the benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both of the child's parents.  There are two elements - or at least two elements - to that particular primary consideration.  The first is that there has to be a benefit to the child in the relationship with the parent; the second is that the relationship is to be meaningful; and the third, of course, is whether there is to be a relationship at all.  The first of these is that it is generally presumed that there will be a benefit to the child in having a relationship with both parents.  It does not always follow that it is beneficial.  There are some instances where it is inappropriate for a child to have a relationship with a parent.  These are necessarily rare but nevertheless should not be overlooked.

12. The question of what constitutes a meaningful relationship is in part considered under the Act, but broadly speaking, relates to the ability of a child to be able to relate to that parent as a parent in whatever the relevant circumstances.  If a child is separated for a variety of otherwise legitimate reasons from one parent by a vast geographical distance, that relationship with the parent from whom the child is separated will necessarily be different from one who is living next-door to a parent.  "Meaningful" does not, as Kay J has remarked recently, does not mean "optimal," but it does mean that there must be some meaning to it.[1]  A relationship simply brought together for the purposes of having a relationship, come what may, or to satisfy some desire on the part of a parent to participate as opposed to the benefit to the child in having the relationship does not count.

    [1] Godfrey & Sanders (2007) 208 FLR 287 at [36]

13. Further, there is, in the second of the primary considerations, a requirement that a child must be protected from physical or psychological harm, or from being subjected to or exposed to abuse, neglect or family violence.  The interesting part of that is the second part - though not relevant to these proceedings - which says the danger to be protected against is the child’s being exposed to, inter alia, family violence.  Later in the additional considerations one of the factors to be taken into account is family violence, which is a subtlety which may or may not have been intended by the drafters but which nevertheless appears in the legislation.

14. In this case the more pressing need is, perhaps, the concern - and I adopt the word used by the mother - on the part of the mother to protect the children from physical or psychological harm from the father.  This arises out of allegations that come from incidents which now happened some years ago which, placed at their highest, constitute J’s allegation that her father had digitally penetrated her genitals.  The evidence about that is something I shall turn to in a moment, but I pass for a moment to the other matters that I am obliged to take into account and to identify the factors that I am taking into account in reaching the conclusions I have.

15. The views of the children as to what they believe to be appropriate are not a definitive matter in these circumstances.  It is not suggested by the mother that the children have an unhappy time when they are with their father.  It is not suggested that the children are expressing strong views one way or the other about the time they should spend with either parent and even if they were, their age is such that this would hardly be a factor that I could regard as being determinative.

16. There is some argument about the nature of the relationship of the children with each of their parents and with other people, including their grandparents, though no-one suggests that they do not have an appropriate and loving relationship with each set of grandparents.  The allegation, I suppose, it could be put, from the children's mother is that the children's father is a controlling person who is prone to fits of rage and that this may have an effect upon the ability of the children properly to relate with him.  That is a matter which will require further evidence in the course of the final hearing.  At the moment I cannot say on the evidence I have before me that I would be satisfied - and I emphasise, on the evidence I have before me at the moment - that this must necessarily be a factor that will weigh upon final decision.  It is a factor, however, that any sole expert in these proceedings should take into account and provide me with some assistance.

17. It would be fair to say that the willingness and ability of each of the children's parents to facilitate and encourage a close and continuing relationship between the children and their father must be in some doubt.  This, in circumstances where there are allegations of child abuse, is not an unreasonable response on the part of the mother.  The difficulty, of course, is that even at the end of proceedings in this Court there may never be any satisfactory conclusion as to whether or not the events that she fears occurred have occurred, in which case it may remain as a sword hanging over the parties' heads for many years into the future, which is not desirable but may be inevitable.

18. If the children are separated from their father - relevantly in these circumstances because no-one suggests they should be separated from their mother - for any lengthy period, or are prevented from having any reasonable time with their father for any lengthy period - it is likely that they will lose their connexion with him to the same extent that it existed in the past.  In this regard I take account of the fact that for a time, at least, the father was the primary carer for the children and that their relationship with him is one that ought, ordinarily, to be supported, subject only to the other matters to which I have made some reference so far.

19. There are difficulties associated with any arrangement about the time the children spend with their father.  These in part, are brought about by the parties’ having expended significant sums of money on litigation already in these proceedings.  The difficulties are also brought about in part by their need to support the children and to do so in the difficult circumstances where they are both in different cities and the travel costs associated with the children are inevitable.  It appears that there is still some dispute about child support which I have yet to get to the bottom of.

20. Part of these proceedings relates to the capacity of either of the children's parents properly to provide for the needs of the children including their emotional and intellectual needs.  There is not a strong argument that I can detect from the very many affidavits that have been filed in these proceedings that either parent is incapable of properly looking after the physical needs of the children.  Certainly in the past the parties agreed that the father would be primary carer for a time when he was unemployed and the mother was able to obtain employment, and the father raises no complaint about the standard of the mother's care, unless one takes account of his calling the police on 20 June this year, when he sent the police around to see if the children were all right.  It seems to me that that was more illustrative, as I suggested to Mr Howard in addresses before me today, of an over-reaction to a situation than any genuine concern about whether the children might be in any danger in their mother's care.

21. The mother, of course, believes that the father may be incapable of providing for the needs of the children, especially J, if he has been the perpetrator of sexual abuse upon her.  Again, this is a reasonable response if she accepts that the allegations are true and that they have been made out and I have no doubt about her sincerity in that regard at present. 

22. The children do not have any special cultural requirements that require any attention at this point and I am again drawn to questions as set out in s 60CC(3)(i) about the attitude of the parents to the children and to their responsibilities.  It would be fair to say that, given the difficult order that was made by the learned Federal Magistrate in these proceedings, the mother has demonstrated a very positive attitude to these responsibilities by persisting in what must have been an unpleasant situation for her and being present with the father while time with the children was occurring.  Equally, it would have to be said that the father has persisted in seeing the children and attempting to see the children in circumstances which must have been very difficult for him, having the mother present, given that their antipathy to each other is palpable.

23. These are factors which I take as being of credit to both parents in that they have demonstrated that they would want to look after their children as best they are able.  Sadly, the circumstances of this matter have militated against that and now there is a lot of water that has passed under the bridge and many affidavits in which allegations, counter-allegations, cross-allegations, new allegations, nearly new allegations, past allegations, are all trotted out and hung out on the line like dirty washing in the sight of everyone around the place - a very unfortunate development.

24. The Act requires that I should take account of family violence and although there are assertions about the father's rage it is not suggested, as far as I can determine at this point, that this is a serious concern in relation to the children except to the extent that if the father were, in colloquial terms, to ‘lose it’ when the children were in his care they may be exposed to violence, I suppose, if the allegations of the father spanking the children were to be treated as established in due course.  That is possible.  At this stage I am not satisfied on the evidence - and I note in this regard the father has had no reasonable opportunity to respond with any evidence of his own about questions of rage and the incidents that have been referred to - that I could form any conclusion that this is a matter which should bear upon any decision I make at this point.

25. Finally among the matters I am to take into account, the Court is directed to try to find a solution which means the parties do not come back to Court.  No matter what decision I make today the parties will be back in Court, so that is not possible, but I should certainly not make an order that is going to mean the parties come back to Court regularly until the matter can be finally heard.

26. Those, then, are the factors that I am to take account of.  The Act sets out in s 60CC(4) the fact that I should also - and must, in the words of the Act - consider the extent to which each of the parents has taken opportunities to participate in time with the children or decisions about their long-term care, welfare and development, or has facilitated the participation of the other parent in those matters.  This is a matter in which the parents have been in a state of - perhaps war (putting it a little strongly), but certainly in high dispute for a long time.  It would be reasonable to say that there have not been many opportunities for those matters to be effectively demonstrated except, as I have already remarked, favourably to those parents in their cooperation in quite difficult circumstances to ensure that the children maintain some contact with their father.

27. The dispute today has centred in part on the suitability of different people to supervise the time that the children spend with their father.  This arises out of the need imposed upon the Court by the decision of the High Court in M & M[2] and B & B,[3] which were decided about the same time, which set forth a consideration to be undertaken in matters relating to allegations of child sexual abuse.  It has commonly been extrapolated to circumstances where children have been the subject of physical abuse as opposed to sexual abuse, but the original decisions related to sexual abuse.  In the context of those matters the Court said that it may not be in some cases that a Court can or even should make a determination about whether or not acts of child abuse have occurred. 

    [2] (1988) 166 CLR 69

    [3] (1988) 82 ALR 584

28. This is a reasonable decision, I say with respect to their Honours, because in most cases there are only two witnesses to the allegations that are being made.  One is the person who is asserted to have carried out the act - in this case the father; the other is the child, who is alleged to have been the victim of the act.  In the case of children, in many cases their evidence is either difficult or has been tainted by reporting it to people along the way.  It is generally not done in any malicious sense, but frequently by the time children have got to an appropriate time to report to an appropriate person, their evidence is now the subject of some recitation on a number of occasions and it is in many cases doubtful as to whether they are remembering what they said in the first place or remembering what happened.  This is not necessarily the case here, where the allegations were made and followed up quite rapidly.

1. However, leave that to one side.  The situation is now almost a third of J’s life ago, and in practical terms, her ability to be able to be a witness in the sense that this would normally be used in criminal proceedings is almost non-existent.  We are therefore left, in making a final determination, with the sworn denials of the father that anything occurred and the allegations made by J and reported to different people - in this case her mother and a doctor - and not reported to other people - including the police and apparently social workers - as being the basis upon which a determination can be made.  It follows that particularly as the Evidence Act 1995 and the decision of their Honours in the High Court in Briginshaw v Briginshaw (1938) 60 CLR 366 that any determination about these matters must be made without just a mere mechanical balancing of probabilities, but rather, by me on the basis that I have a genuine sense of conviction that something has occurred.

2. In some cases this is described as a sliding scale, but in reality it is not that at all.  It is not that something moves closer to being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt; it is really that a Court cannot simply engage in, as their Honours in that decision said, a mechanical comparison of probabilities, but rather must feel a genuine sense that something has in fact occurred.  That will be a matter for determination by me in the final hearing, but it illustrates that the admonition administered by their Honours in the High Court in M v M and B v B, that a Court may not properly make a determination about these matters in some cases, is an appropriate warning.

3. What their Honours went on to say, however - and not that it made the task of trial Judges any easier - is that notwithstanding any determination that might be made about these matters, a Court, under the Family Law Act, must be very careful only to make an order which would not impose an unacceptable risk to the children involved.  Nowhere does the High Court define what constitutes unacceptable risk, and extrapolations from it have been made by a number of Judges since, including me in the decision of P v S,[4] but the essence is that the nature of the risk is to be weighed against the probability that it may occur and the consequences that may flow there from. 

   [4] Unreported, 13 August 1997

4. If the risk is that by crossing a road someone will necessarily be run over by a car, then the consequences and the nature of the risk are high.  Obviously anyone crossing the road might be run over by a car, but if it happens to be in the middle of the night and it is a remote country road, the risk is very small.  The combination and balancing of these things in the relevant consideration is a difficult task which trial Judges have to undertake, but which does not admit of any ready conclusion.

5. In essence, if all risk is removed there is obviously no unacceptable risk.  It is predicated by the decision of the High Court that any determination must involve, to some extent, a risk.  The question is whether it is unacceptable.  In this context, as Mr Howard confirmed, the risk is that the father may persist with the conduct which it is asserted he did in the past, which involves some form of sexual interference with J.  There are subsidiary risks that are really associated with the potential for him to - I suppose I am interpolating into the mother's comments rather than interpreting them - that he would be grooming her by having private conversations with her and assuring that she is favourable to spending time alone with him.

6. These are matters which need to be considered in the context in which I am currently examining them.  First, given that the issues relating to the alleged sexual interference have not been resolved, it would be inappropriate to proceed without at least taking account of the fact that they might be true, irrespective of whether or not they are found to be true.  This means that it would be inappropriate to have a situation where the children, in particular J, would be left alone with their father, except in the most temporary of situations, until a proper determination can be made about the nature of the allegations.

7. The second is that if the children are not to be left alone with their father, what level of involvement of other people is required?  By definition, if there is to be another person involved, it restrains the father from being alone with the child.  It therefore means that necessarily any person who is involved in arrangements for the children to spend time with their father must be there when the father is there with the children.  There is no other reasonable basis given the first premise to which I have just referred.

8. The third is that the person who is there must be in a position to interfere if, in fact, anything untoward should occur.  Otherwise there would be no point in the person being present.  If the person was either insensitive, incapable, overborne by, or the agent of the father, then in those circumstances that person would be unlikely to provide the preventative function to which I have referred a few moments ago.

9. The fourth point is that if the circumstances in which the time that the father spends with the children are so constrained that no possible interference could occur, this may nevertheless impact seriously upon his ability to have a meaningful relationship with the children.  For example, if the father were locked in a room which had no windows and closed circuit television and someone maintained supervision it would be obvious that nothing could occur and that there would be no unacceptable risk of what would happen.  On the other hand, that would not be in the slightest way conducive to any relationship between the child and the father, nor would it be appropriate to have that sort of supervision imposed.

10. Necessarily, these things are a balance.  The mother asserts in her affidavit that the father's partner is not going to be in a position to fulfil the protective role that I have outlined in the preceding comments.  This is based on her perception - from what she agrees and her counsel concedes has been a limited involvement with Ms P - that Ms P is subject to the influence of the father and that she would not, it is extrapolated from that, act to protect the children because her will would either be overborne by the father, or alternatively, she would not believe that the father would do anything and therefore would, in effect, allow a situation to occur which would permit the risked conduct to happen.

11. For her part Ms P has sworn an affidavit in which she says - and I quote:

    I make an oath that while the children are in [the father’s] care I will act as a supervisor to the children and will not leave the children alone with [the father].  I understand I have a duty to the children and the Court and that in the event of anything happening to the children I will immediately terminate contact and report the incident to the Court.

12. That is her sworn evidence.  The mother, reasonably in her concerns for the children, worries that this may not be enough in the circumstances to constitute an adequate and satisfactory protector of the children.  She suggests that her parents, who would have to travel from G to Canberra to carry out the function, would be the appropriate supervisors.  They are people with whom the children are familiar and they are people with whom the father is familiar.  The father in his address to me did not cavil with the fact that it was possible that they could, in fact, conduct the supervision satisfactorily, although he was critical to the extent of saying that they should not dictate to him where he should go with the children but should simply accompany him.  As in all things in life there is a balance.  It is not appropriate that the father should be able to determine exactly what he is going to do, nor it is appropriate that he should be artificially constrained in normal activities by those who are engaged in spending time with him and the children.

13. That constitutes, from the mother's point of view, a safer alternative, but also involves significant inconvenience to Mr and Mrs W who are the mother's parents and also restricts the opportunities for the father and his partner to do things together with the children which may be appropriate, given that they have, so it is asserted, a long-term future together.  The possibility of having only professional supervision has the disadvantages of requiring more frequent travel on the part of the father to Canberra, the cost (although the cost in most cases with Marymead - and I say this without having any evidence - is not extreme) and that it imposes a further level of artificiality in the time that the children spend with their father.

14. These are matters that I have to weigh in the context, as I said, of an unacceptable risk.  It seems to me that in the circumstances where the father's partner has said she will remain with the children in his care, that she would satisfy the first of the criteria that I outlined above in relation to a supervisor.  There is no reason for me to believe that she would necessarily leave the children alone with the father, given that she has sworn that she will not do so.  I understand and accept that the mother has worries that because Ms P has not said that she believes that the allegations occurred, that she may not regard them as serious and hence not take every precaution that the mother might take in her own situation.  That is possible, but I think in the light of the circumstances of this matter, unlikely.

15. The second element is whether she would be capable of being an appropriate protector of the children and not be over-borne by the father.  I am not satisfied with the evidence provided by the mother about this matter and I am not satisfied in these circumstances that I should not be prepared to engage in that level of risk-taking, if that's what it amounts to, at this point.  I am conscious of the fact that the orders I am making are interim orders and are not orders that will apply on a final basis.

16. I am, however, more concerned at this point about the fact that this is a situation which is highly fraught and that possibly the children, but certainly the parents, are both highly conscious of all of the concerns that are associated with allegations of child abuse and Court proceedings.  I am particularly concerned that if I were to meet the father's application, which is that the children spend a weekend with him on every third or fourth weekend as the case may be, this would heighten the level of anxiety for the mother and would also provide opportunities for further concerns to be expressed because of the greater difficulty of maintaining - and I use the word in inverted commas - "supervision" overnight as opposed to during the day. 

17. Accordingly, it seems to me that I balance the appropriate area of questions of risk, and I balance the concerns of each of the parents, and more particularly the opportunity for the children to spend some reasonable time with their father, by making an order that would mean that the father would spend daytime with the children under the supervision of his partner.  It seems to me there are a number of possibilities about this.  One is that it could happen on every third weekend for the day in Canberra, or it could happen, perhaps, on every third weekend on two consecutive days in Canberra as the father himself suggested in submissions today, or it could happen on every month on two days in a row, with the children returning to their mother overnight.  That would represent a holding pattern until such time as the Court could come to a conclusion about the serious matters between the parties. 

18. In a moment I will give the parties and the children's representative an opportunity to discuss which of those possibilities might be more appropriate.  It seems to me that the time that the children spend with their father should be spent in Canberra.  This prevents the imposition upon the mother, which I think is probably in the circumstances unreasonable, of having to go to Sydney.  I think it also acknowledges the father's willingness to do this, but also provides him with a challenge, that what may well be inconvenient will need to be maintained to demonstrate his commitment to the children and providing a proper relationship to them in the short term.  In other words, if he is not up to making this arrangement work then it will obviously cause a problem for him and ultimately, sadly, for the children, in due course when the matter is finalised and I have to make decisions which involve them on a permanent basis.

19. I would also propose to make orders which would require neither parent to discuss the proceedings before this Court or the allegations about the sexual abuse with the children.  Each of the parents assures me they do not, in which case it will be easy for them to comply with the direction.  I will also require each of the parents to be restrained from saying unkind and unpleasant things - sometimes referred to in this Court as a non-denigration order - about each other and I will not take the slightest bit kindly to the proposition that this is not being met by either party.  I will also impose, by order, a requirement on the supervising partner, Ms P, that if at any point she believes that there is a failure on the part of the husband to deal with the children appropriately she is to bring the arrangement to an end and to report the incident to the Court through the Independent Children's Lawyer. 

20. In this regard I indicate that part of my assessment of the unacceptable risk in this matter is that, irrespective of whether or not the conduct that the father is accused of occurred in the past, it would require an act of stupidity on his part, let alone maliciousness, and let alone evil, to interfere with his daughter while proceedings are pending.  I do not know whether anyone is suggesting he is that stupid, but nevertheless, that would be the level of it.  That is the first thing.  The second is, it seems to me that even if he was stupid enough to contemplate doing that, to do so in the presence of his partner with the consequences that he himself has indicated, is a further reason why, in my opinion, the arrangements I am suggesting would not constitute an unacceptable risk but would in other ways meet the requirements of the Act about the need to maintain a proper and meaningful relationship between the children and each of their parents.

I certify that the preceding forty-eight (48) paragraphs are a true copy of the reasons for judgment of the Honourable Deputy Chief Justice Faulks

Associate: 

Date:  3 February 2009