Damron & Wagoner (No 2) - [2023] FedCFamC2F 1619

FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA
(DIVISION 2)
Damron & Wagoner (No 2) [2023] FedCFamC2F 1619

File number(s): NCC 3521 of 2018

Judgment of: JUDGE BETTS

Date of judgment: 1 December 2023

Catchwords: FAMILY LAW – Parenting – final orders – one child aged 6 years – whether the child should spend no time with the father or limited supervised time – where the father has a long history of perpetrating coercive and controlling family violence – where the father exhibits an inability and complete unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity of what he had done and to accept responsibility in any way – where the father actively used or manipulated the child in the dynamics of abuse and coercive control – where the father’s coercive controlling family violence places the child at very high risk of future harm – best interests of the child to spend no time nor have any communication with father.

Legislation: Family Law Act1975 (Cth)

Division: Division 2 Family Law

Number of paragraphs: 264

Date of last submission/s: 30 November 2023

Date of hearing: 28, 29 and 30 November 2023

Place: Newcastle

Counsel for the Applicant: Mr Graham

Solicitors for the Applicant: Powe & White Family Lawyers

Counsel for the Respondent: Mr Flanigan

Solicitors for the Respondent: Grant & Co

ORDERS

NCC 3521 of 2018

FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA (DIVISION 2)

BETWEEN:
MS DAMRON

Applicant

AND:
MR WAGONER

Respondent

ORDER MADE BY:

JUDGE BETTS

DATE OF ORDER:

1 DECEMBER 2023

THE COURT ORDERS THAT:
1.All prior parenting Orders made in relation to NCC3521/2018 be discharged.
2.The Mother have sole parental responsibility for the child X born in 2017 (the “child”).
3.The child shall live with the Mother.
4.The child shall spend no time with and shall not communicate with the Father MR WAGONER (the “Father”).
5.Pursuant to s68B of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) and for the personal protection of the Mother and child, the Father be and is hereby restrained from:
(a)Approaching or coming within or otherwise permitting any other person on his behalf to approach or come within 500 metres of any residence where the Mother and/or the child may from time to time reside;
(b)Attending upon any place of education where the child may from time to time attend;
(c)Attending upon any location where the child may from time to time participate in sporting and/or extra-curricular activities.

6.The Mother is granted leave to provide a copy of these Orders to any place of education where the child may from time to time attend and/or any medical and/or allied health service which may from time to time be involved in the care and/or treatment of the child.
7.The Mother is given leave to provide a copy of these Orders to any extracurricular care provider of the child or any other person who has the care of the child at any time.
8.Pursuant to section 11 of the Passports Act 2005 Cth (or any Act replacing that Act and making like or similar provision):
(a)The Mother be permitted to apply for and have issued to her, an Australian travel document for the child, or renew any such Australian travel document without the consent of the Father, AND IT IS REQUESTED that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australian Passport Office) provide such assistance as is necessary in relation to the issue or renewal of any such Australian Travel document.
(b)The Mother is authorised to provide a copy of these orders to any authority required for the purposes of applying for or renewing the child’s Australian travel document.

9.A copy of these reasons and Orders be provided to the NSW Police and to the Department of Communities & Justice.
10.The Father is at liberty to provide to his treating psychologist a copy of these reasons and Orders, together with a copy of the Family Report, redacted as to the Mother’s personal information NOTING that such material cannot be further disseminated.
11.If the Mother seeks a costs order against the Father in respect of the final hearing she is to file and serve an application upon him within twenty-eight (28) days, with such application to be served upon the Father at his residential address.

NOTATION:
A.The Court particularly draws the attention of NSW Police to the injunctions set out in order 5 and to section 68C of the Family Law Act. Section 68C provides that a Police Officer can arrest a person without a warrant if they consider that a person is in breach of an Order. It is the Court’s intention to draw the attention of NSW Police to section 68C, a copy of which is attached to this Order.

Note: The form of the order is subject to the entry in the Court’s records.
Note: This copy of the Court’s Reasons for judgment may be subject to review to remedy minor typographical or grammatical errors (r 10.14(b) Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth)), or to record a variation to the order pursuant to r 10.13 Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Family Law) Rules 2021 (Cth).
Section 121 of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) makes it an offence, except in very limited circumstances, to publish proceedings that identify persons, associated persons, or witnesses involved in family law proceedings.
IT IS NOTED that publication of this judgment by this Court under a pseudonym has been approved pursuant to s 121(9)(g) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth).
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
JUDGE BETTS

These reasons for judgment were delivered orally. They have been corrected from the transcript so as to make them easier to read.
INTRODUCTION
These are parenting proceedings concerning a young and vulnerable boy, X, born in 2017. X is presently just six (6) years of age and has just commenced kindergarten this year.
The applicant in these proceedings is X’s mother, Ms Damron (“the mother”). The respondent to the proceedings is X’s father, Mr Wagoner (“the father”).
The parties were in a relationship between April 2015 and April 2018, a relationship which was characterised by coercive and controlling family violence inflicted by the father upon the mother. Post-separation, either by way of agreed arrangements or orders of the Court, X has lived with the mother and spent either supervised time with the father during daytime periods, or unsupervised time with the father during daytime periods.
These proceedings have a long and unhappy history. They commenced back in November of 2018. They have limped along in the Court system but have finally been able to be heard on a final basis before me this week. The proceedings need to be brought to an end.
Initially, the debate at the hearing was whether the Court should make an order that:
·the child spend no time and have no communication with the father, together with various injunctions as sought by the mother; or
·whether the father should be spending time with X on what might be called a substantial and significant time basis, which was the father’s original proposal.
By the end of the hearing, having heard all of the evidence and the Court having expressed its concern about the risks in relation to X arising out of the father’s parenting of him, to which I will turn a little later, the father tendered an amended set of orders which was marked as exhibit 17. In that document, the father conceded that rather than equal shared parental responsibility there should be an order for the mother to have sole parental responsibility for X. The order sought that the father be able to spend time with X on a supervised basis either for three hours every month at a contact centre, with the father to meet the costs, or alternatively, that the father have what might be called “identity contact” with X for three hours in the first week of February, May, August and November of each calendar year, again to occur at a contact centre.
It was evident to me in the course of the hearing that the father was very distressed at making the proposal which appears in exhibit 17. It was a belated but appropriate concession on his part that there were risks attendant upon his care of the child. It is regrettable for him, and also for X, that the father did not address these issues many years ago, because they have been hiding in plain sight for quite some time.
The debate then really is whether the father should have no time and no communication with X, or whether he should have some limited supervised time. That is really the ambit of the dispute in this case.
THE HEARING
The matter proceeded to hearing before me this week.
At the hearing, the mother was represented by Mr Graeme of counsel. He read and relied upon a Case Outline document filed 24 November 2023 (which included a proposed minute of order), together with the mother’s trial affidavit filed 6 November 2023.
Mr Flanigan of counsel appeared on behalf of the father on a section 102NA basis. He did not have a formal Case Outline document but he read and relied upon the father’s affidavit filed 24 November 2023. The father’s affidavit was prepared personally by the father. Regrettably, it glosses over just about all of the serious risk issues raised against him in the mother’s case, and indeed in some respects, the affidavit attempts to ‘whitewash’ such matters, or at least put them to one side.
In addition to this material there were various documents tendered as exhibits, including the proposed amended minute of orders of the father, to which I have briefly referred, as well as various other subpoenaed records and some audio recordings of the father berating the mother, to which I will turn a little later.
The matter is fresh in my mind. I have had the benefit of seeing both the father and the mother give their evidence in this matter. I have also had the benefit of hearing the Family Report writer give her evidence, and I have the benefit of her Family Report, which is marked as exhibit 1. To be clear, this is the report of Court child expert Ms B. There was, in fact, an earlier Family Report prepared on 27 September 2019 by then Family Consultant Ms C, marked as exhibit 2, together with an earlier Child Dispute Conference Memorandum prepared by then Family Consultant Ms D on 25 January 2019, which was marked as exhibit 3. Of those three (3) pieces of independent evidence from Family Consultants or Court Child Experts, obviously the major focus at trial was on the most recent Family Report of Ms B.
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
I intend now to go through the history of the matter in some detail, because given the issues that are at stake, it is essential that I do so.
I begin by observing that the father is a 42 year old man. He works as a self-employed tradesman in Region E New South Wales. He lives in a two bedroom unit. The mother is 41 years of age. She works from home, although works in an office environment for one day per week. She lives with the maternal grandparents in their six-bedroom home in Region E. The property consists of some acreage and it is approximately twelve kilometres away from where the father lives. The two suburbs, that is, the father’s suburb and the mother’s suburb, are adjoining suburbs and with a park that is common to both. So regardless of what orders the Court makes, it is not as though the parties are going to be living a long distance apart.
The relationship
Beginning with the parties’ relationship, I accept the mother’s evidence that the parties met when they were both in City F. Both of them were living and working over there.
I accept the mother’s evidence that early on in the relationship she felt the father was protective of her, but that as their relationship progressed, she began to feel that he was overly possessive. Over time, the father became more fixed in his views, and when she disagreed with him or had a different opinion, he would respond by yelling at her and demeaning her. I accept the mother’s evidence that she began to feel like if she didn’t tell the father what he wanted to hear, or if she did not agree with whatever his opinion was on the day in question, that he would become infuriated.
I accept the mother’s evidence that, in 2016 while the parties were living in City F, the father’s behaviours of a controlling and coercive nature became somewhat worse and he began to show signs of jealousy when she socialised with other people, and in particular males. When she was with friends, the father would remove his affection, call her names, and she felt, not unreasonably, as though her circle of friends was being reduced, particularly her circle of male friends. I accept her evidence that on one occasion when she caught up with a former male colleague over a coffee, the father became angry that he had not been told, and that he told her she was “a slut” before ignoring her.
I accept the mother’s evidence that there were other occasions when the father became angry and aggressive with her when she was not agreeing with him. These involved him screaming at her, telling her such things as, “you’re a cunt” or “a cunt of a human being”, as well as calling her an “ignorant Aussie bitch” and “pathetic”. (I should record here that although the mother was born in Australia and is an Australian citizen, that the father, in fact, originally comes from New Zealand. He was born there and his parents (the paternal grandparents) still live over there.)
In 2016, the parties left City F and returned to live in Australia.
In late 2016, the parties were in New Zealand, and I accept the mother’s evidence that they got into an argument late one night. During this argument, the father yelled and screamed at the mother, calling her names such as “cunt of a human being”, “ignorant Aussie bitch”, and the like. When the mother began to cry, he told her to “stop putting on a show.” I accept the mother’s evidence that the next morning she went to the bathroom and a lady saw her and asked her if she was all right, because she had apparently heard the father yelling at the mother the night before. Like many victims of family violence, the mother was embarrassed and ashamed, and simply said she was fine.
I accept the mother’s evidence that by or about 2017, the father’s control over her was increasing and he was denying her autonomy. He demanded to look through her mobile phone. He would comment on the people she was talking to and the messages she sent. He demanded that her phone be unlocked and that she not place a passcode on it. All of these things are coercive and controlling by nature.
I accept the mother’s evidence that from around early 2017, some of the verbal attacks by the father towards her escalated into physical attacks, and that the father grabbed her arms and held her around the wrist, and that he threw things at her like clothing. He pushed her on the chest so that she would stay in one spot.
Like many victims of family violence, the mother was too scared to call the Police. She did not know what to do. She did not know how the father would react. She simply internalised things and tried to ‘get by’ as best she could.
I accept the mother’s evidence that in early 2017 the father kicked her after they had a discussion about one of her old boyfriends. He kicked her hard enough to leave a bruise, calling her a “slut” and yelling at her.
Not long after, the mother discovered that she was pregnant. She says that the father’s behaviour continued to escalate and that he continued to inflict the same tirade of abuse against her on a weekly basis.
She said – and having listened to exhibit 5, I accept, that:
This would involve him yelling and screaming at me relentlessly for sometimes up to an hour of his usual tirade of name-calling. It was worse if [Mr Wagoner] had been drinking. [Mr Wagoner]’s consumption of alcohol was often to excess.
Things had become so difficult for the mother at this time, and in the vulnerable position of being pregnant, that she went to see her own psychologist in mid-2017, one Ms G of H Psychology. The mother did so in order to best manage her wellbeing, given the abuse that she was experiencing from the father, and the mother has apparently been seeing Ms G ever since.
The father attended the mother’s midwife appointment. In 2017, he attended her obstetrician appointment. During the examination, the male obstetrician put his hand on the mother’s pelvis, feeling for the baby’s head. This triggered the father’s jealousy, because afterwards he yelled at the mother and called her “a slut” for allowing the doctor to do this. He called her such things for several days afterwards.
I should record here that it is a routine matter for obstetricians to undertake such examinations.
A day or so later, the mother says that she felt like having a bath because her body was aching. She said she told the father this was what she wanted to do and that he responded “Right, then. Go and have a romantic bath and think about your doctor.” It was a jealous comment from an insecure man that left the mother feeling belittled, and she decided not to have the bath after all.
The mother says – and I accept – that the paternal grandmother had visited her in Australia while she was pregnant. It was not a specific visit to see the mother as such, but the mother did talk with the paternal grandmother during this visit, and the paternal grandmother said to the mother that the father was a very jealous person. The paternal grandmother confided in the mother and told her that:
[Mr Wagoner]’s father had also been controlling and jealous and he was diagnosed with morbid jealousy. He went on medication.
I accept the mother’s evidence that the paternal grandmother told her that this was a topic that was simply not spoken about within the paternal family, and that the paternal grandmother told the mother she was concerned about the father having some similarities.
I accept the mother’s evidence that she asked the father to go to a psychologist many times but he would not, and that he rarely apologised or showed any remorse for his behaviours.
The mother was clearly in a difficult situation and in a circumstance of vulnerability. She had not been in a relationship with someone behaving in the way that the father was. She was obviously pregnant and it was not an easy situation.
The mother says that there were other occasions when the father was difficult or unreasonable with her, including verbally attacking her and ‘turning events around’ so that she was made out to be the person at fault in situations. Having seen and heard the father in this trial, I have little doubt as to the mother’s version being accurate. The father in this case has shown almost no capacity to accept responsibility for his actions, a phenomenon that continued right up until the final hearing this week.
X
X was born in 2017.
I accept the mother’s evidence that the father continued to denigrate her, including in X’s presence after he was born. I accept the mother’s evidence that when X was just a baby, the father would be yelling at X that “your mum’s a cunt” or saying to the mother “Don’t teach that boy to be an ignorant arsehole like you.”
I have before me as exhibit 5 a recording which I can only describe as disturbing and confronting. It was recorded by the mother on a date around late 2017. She started the recording because the father was angry at her for having apparently given him the wrong number for a quote for a particular job the father had done.
It is really quite an extraordinary piece of evidence, difficult to listen to.
During this recording, the father can be heard making the following utterances to the mother, who is, as a general statement, almost unable to ever get a word in. When she does, it is a placating attempt to try to sort things out. She makes various apologies. At one point, she starts sounding as though she’s crying. These are the sorts of things the father said to her, and this is not by any means a complete list.:
Don’t be fucking ignorant…
Shut the fuck up…
Answer the fucking question…Answer the fucking question.
Stop interrupting me, [Ms Damron].
I pause here to say that the mother almost could not get a word in herself. It is quite ironic that the father would tell her to stop interrupting him. I continue:
Shut your mouth…Answer the question. Listen and answer accordingly.
And then when the mother is upset:
Don’t have a little cry about it…
Don’t talk shit to me.
You’re a fucking idiot.
Shut the fuck up…You’re a fucking idiot.
And then a criticism of the maternal grandmother:
Don’t be a pig ignorant cunt like your fucking mother…
And:
Don’t talk over the top of me…
Shut up, you dumb fuck…
Zip it. Try it. See if you can manage it…
You’re an ignorant cunt of a human being…
Thanks, cunt. Don’t be a fuckwit…
I don’t give a fuck what you have to say.

At one point, baby X, who was clearly right next to the mother, can be heard stirring in the background, and when the mother tells the father not to yell in front of X, he says:
Why are you fucking talking, you bitch?
Shut your fucking mouth and learn to fucking listen…Dumb little fucking head.
The father tells the mother she has a “thick fucking skull”. When the mother again tells him to stop yelling in front of the baby, he says:
Get fucked, you ignorant little prick. Stop talking. Go fuck yourself. Start to fucking listen.
This was ‘coercive, controlling family violence 1-0-1’. It constituted repeated derogatory taunts of the mother in a circumstance where young X was right there. It was some of the most disgraceful behaviour I have ever heard.
It is clear that the father completely lost his capacity to have a rational discussion with the mother. None of his conversation was rational. It is quite clear that the father was so angry and agitated that he could not stop himself. The mother actually gave him the answer to the question that he had wanted about ten minutes into the recording, but he seemed to manage to continue attacking her verbally for several minutes thereafter. It was quite extraordinary behaviour, and given that it was recorded by the mother on this occasion, it makes me wonder what the impact must have been on this relatively young mother in having to deal with a person behaving in such an aggressive, unreasonable, and, frankly, violent manner.
In many ways, the father’s conduct on this day is worse than physical family violence. It was an attack on the mother’s character. It was putting himself on a pedestal and putting her down on the ground, an attitude of superiority that was noted in the Family Reports and which has been evident throughout the course of the proceeding - and one which has no basis in fact.
The relationship, unhealthy as it was, limped on after the above event.
I accept that the father was an active and an involved parent to X, and I accept that he loved his boy and that he tried to play an active role in his life.
But the father was unable to manage his behaviours. I accept the mother’s evidence that in around early 2018, the parties and X were staying at the father’s brother’s house in New Zealand. The father came home late at night after he had been out with a friend. The father had had an argument with his brother. Once they were in the bedroom, he verbally attacked and pushed the mother with his shoulder and said, “Fuck up, cunt. Shut your big mouth” as well as calling her all the usual names, such as “ignorant cunt” and “bitch”. He would not let her escape from the room, and he followed her when she went into the bathroom, saying, “Ignorant cunt. Listen, cunt” before throwing the baby blanket at her. X was again a witness to this tirade. All the mother could do was wait until the father eventually stopped.
The next day, the mother sent him a text message telling him that what he had said to her was unacceptable. She suggested they go to couples’ counselling, and I accept her evidence that he did not apologise, much less acknowledge that what he did was wrong.
Separation
The parties finally separated around the Easter long weekend in 2018 when they were apparently staying at a share house in Region J with a group of friends.
The version of events given by the mother appears in her affidavit, supplemented by further evidence which appears in subpoenaed material wherein she spoke with the Police about this event. What she told the Police is more contemporaneous than what is set out in her affidavit, and so probably somewhat more accurate, but the details are essentially the same.
What the mother told Police, and what I accept happened, is that at about 10.30pm on a Saturday in early 2018, the parties were in their bedroom with the mother seated on the bed, breastfeeding X. The father began talking to her about a subject the mother cannot remember. She swapped the child to the other breast and the father became enraged, telling her she was not even listening. The mother continued to feed the child.
(I pause here to observe this: one of the father’s triggers for becoming angry at the mother appears to be that she would stop listening to him. I consider that there is probably some truth in this, because the mother was, to a large extent, having to live in survival mode. It was easier for her to simply be quiet and cop the abuse from the father than it was to stand up to him.)
After the child had fallen asleep that night, the mother placed him in his bassinet on the right-hand side of the bed. At some point, the father pinned the mother down on the bed, using his forearm to apply pressure to the mother’s chest and left arm. He was squeezing her and causing her pain in the arms and chest, telling her words to the effect of, “Game on. Let’s do this.” She sat up and the father yelled at her, “What are you doing? Go to that side of the bed” motioning towards the other side, away from where young X was. The mother did as she was told.
He then pinned her down, yelling at her, saying, “You look at me. Don’t ignore me” continuing to shout at her and calling her the usual names, namely a “cunt”, a “dog” and an “arrogant Aussie bitch”. The mother got up to walk to the bedroom door, saying, “[Mr Wagoner], if you don’t stop, I’ll open this door and tell people what you’re doing.” He told her to get back to bed, which she did.
It is obvious that there was a commotion, however, because a friend who was staying in the house then came to the bedroom door and said, “Come on, guys. We all need to sleep”. The friend suggested the parties sleep in different rooms. I strongly suspect that this friend, whoever they were, was worried about what was happening in that room, and that the suggestion that the parents sleep separately was for the mother’s safety, but it is impossible to make a finding about it and it probably does not strictly matter. The point is that other people in the house were concerned by what was going on.
Neither party did sleep in a separate room, however, because neither of them wanted to leave X. The mother did not want to leave him with the father and the father did not want to be separated from X either.
The mother pretended to be asleep and the father was pulling at her singlet top and he scratched her, as well as scratching her mole - probably accidentally, as I read the material - but it caused the mother to bleed onto the singlet. The father grabbed at the mother’s cheek and hair and said things like, “If you involve other people, I’ll pull your face off. I’ll smash them.”
The mother was scared - in my view, entirely reasonably.
At some stage during this fracas, the father pulled the sheet and doona over the mother’s head, holding it down, saying, “I hope you suffocate.” Once again, another person who was staying at the house entered the bedroom. Again, other people were being concerned by what they could hear. At this point, the father let go of the sheet and pretended that everything was fine. The mother pretended to be asleep.
The father asked the mother what she would do later when X woke up. The mother was pretending to be asleep and he was saying, “Do the world a favour. Hold your breath. Do the world a favour.”
At one point, the father took young X and placed him on the bed next to him and said “I have all I need now.”
The mother struggled to sleep for quite some time.
This was the end of these parties’ relationship, and a good thing it was that it ended. The mother was the victim of coercive, controlling, demeaning, belittling, physical and emotional family violence administered by the father behind closed doors when nobody could witness it, in a cowardly fashion.
As a result of this event, the mother went to the Police who took out an Apprehended Violence Order (‘AVO’) for her protection. The AVO was made final in early 2018, for a period of twelve months.
Post-separation: the early days
Notwithstanding the father’s violent behaviour, he had a sense of entitlement in the months that followed. He saw himself as the victim. He did not accept responsibility for any of his own behaviours. Quite the contrary; when the mother suggested that he have supervised time with X he acquiesced, very unhappily, considering that it was unnecessary, and that the mother and her family were simply being unreasonable, perhaps trying to punish him.
The father’s attitude about his assault of the mother in the share house is referred to in the first Family Report prepared on 26 September 2019. It records the following at paragraph 115:
The father advised that he was not violent towards the mother. When asked about the conflict that was reported at the end of their relationship, the father said that he had been intoxicated at the time. He believes that he “may have” grabbed her by the shoulders, but said that he can’t remember the incident clearly. The father advised that his psychologist had suggested lack of recall surrounding the incident may have been a result of his PTSD.
I reject the father’s evidence to the report writer. The father is unwilling to admit to what he did. He prefers to ‘play the card’ that some form of mental health condition has impaired his memory at that particularly critical moment when it works to his advantage to have no memory. The father is manipulative. I reject his evidence that he does not remember what happened. He even had the temerity to tell the Family Report writer at paragraph 118 that the mother had exaggerated the incident, although he accepted that he might have called the mother a “bitch”.
In case I am wrong about this assessment in [69], and my assessment of the father is thought to be too critical, one only needs to have a look at what the father said in paragraph 23 of his trial affidavit filed on 24 November 2023. That is, a week ago today:
On or around [early] 2018, I was charged with common assault and intimidation. In my absence, I was found guilty of these charges and an ADVO was issued for the protection of [Ms Damron] from myself. To the best of my knowledge, the ADVO included conditions 1, 4 and 9, and expired in [early] 2020. [Ms Damron] and I separated on a final basis shortly thereafter.
In no detail whatsoever does the father deal with this particular assault. He does, however, say that he went on to see a psychologist at K Psychology “in an attempt to address my behaviour and possibly resume my relationship with Ms Damron”. His affidavit beggars the question, what behaviour? I read very little in his affidavit up to that paragraph which tells me that he had done anything wrong. Quite the contrary. His affidavit very much portrays himself as the victim.
Returning then to the chronology, the mother was agreeing after separation, despite the terms of the AVO, that the father could spend some limited supervised time with the child. As I have indicated, the father was not content with this. Why would he be? In his mind, he had done nothing wrong. In his mind, it was entirely the mother and her meddling family who were to blame.
In mid-2018, the father kept X for an hour longer than had been agreed. This was to be a theme in subsequent visits as well. The mother asked her solicitor – she had a different solicitor at that time – to write to the father proposing some arrangements until the parties could attend mediation. The mother was legitimately concerned that the father would hold onto X for longer than was agreed.
In mid-2020, the father sent the mother a text message that said:
Goodbye. You’ve pushed me to this. You’ve taken my son away from me, and it is so cruel and heartbreaking. The situation could have been handled so much differently, but your family and you are hellbent on torturing me, even though you know I’ve been suffering from depression and anxiety. I hope you all feel good.
It is unclear exactly what the father intended by this message, but on any reasonable view, by any objective observer, it constituted a threat of suicide. The mother certainly took it that way. She texted the father saying:
[Mr Wagoner], don’t do anything silly. Your son needs you.
The mother tried to call him. She arranged for her biological father to try to call him. Police were contacted. They spoke to the father’s sister. Nobody could find the father.
The Police undertook a search for the father. They apparently found the father’s car parked at a clifftop but the father was not there. Police deployed a helicopter and a boat to try to find him.
Police and the mother’s stepfather, Mr L, searched bushland. (Mr L effectively acts as the mother’s father in a practical sense. In these reasons Mr L will be referred to as ‘the maternal grandfather’).
Eventually at 10.35pm, Police found the father who had walked back home. He had been out drinking.
The father had instigated a significant Police search by reason of the text message that he had sent to the mother, a message which, as I have indicated, was certainly consistent with being suicidal.
The father said that the mother had misinterpreted his message and that his intention was just to communicate that he was going to access legal advice in the parenting dispute. He was unapologetic. He took no responsibility for any of this. In my view, it was either further coercive behaviour by him directed at the mother to try to get what he wanted, or it was a genuine mental health breakdown. I suspect it to be more likely that it was an attempt at manipulation and coercion on the part of the father, but I cannot exclude the latter possibility that it was a mental health issue.
In any event, subsequent to this rather dramatic situation, the mother continued to facilitate the father spending time. I pause here to say that I think the mother would have been well within her rights to say that the father should have no time with this child at that point. He was clearly behaving in a manner that caused concern, behaving erratically, aggressively.
The father was continuing to press for increased time with X. He was fixated in a negative view of the mother, and he was taking no responsibility for his own violent and inappropriate behaviour.
Nonetheless, the mother continued to facilitate some time occurring. The father pushed the envelope. He would be telling the mother that she was doing the wrong thing, that she was punishing him, or he would be accusing her of doing the bare minimum. He accused her of ruining Father’s Day in 2018, even though he had kept the child for two hours longer than had been agreed.
In late 2018, at a time when X was in the father’s care, he contacted the mother wanting another thirty minutes’ extra time with him, and saying to her:
If you hadn’t have been ignorant and answered your phone, you would have known.
The father was continuing to be aggressive towards the mother.
In late 2018, again when X was in his care, the father messaged the mother to say that X would be spending all day with him, not just the time that had been agreed. The mother had to contact him and try to convince him to return X to her. The mother arranged for a friend of hers to go and collect X from the father, and the friend relayed to the mother that the father had said to her to ask “where the mother’s head is at” and that “he can’t believe that she was taking X away from him.” This was despite the father keeping X for two and a half hours longer than had been agreed. It was just more coercion. It was just more pressure.
When X sustained some minor bruising in late 2018, the father was critical of the mother’s parenting, telling her that he might have to just keep the child overnight because she was not looking after him properly. Once again, he made that suggestion to her at a time when he had X in his care. That is to say, it is a theme that when the father had X in his possession, then he would ‘push the envelope’ by making demands of the mother and expecting extra time with him.
The night before X’s first birthday, he was spending some time with the father, who had been telephoning the mother. She was not responding, and the father texted her to say:
I will keep [X] if you don’t answer your phone.
Again, this was coercive behaviour and a determination to say what he wanted to say and that the mother was going to listen. The father was continuing to behave in a coercive, controlling manner towards the mother, as he had before the parties had separated.
The mother was in the position where she had no consent orders, no formal documents that she could enforce in a Court to regulate the father’s time. She felt to some degree that she was at the father’s mercy, and to some extent, that is true. So she made a decision to stop facilitating any time with the father, who did not, in fact, end up seeing X for something like four or five weeks. The situation whereby the father did not get to see X, in my view, arose as a direct result of the father’s own aggressive, coercive behaviours.
These proceedings
The mother commenced proceedings in this Court on 12 November 2018.
In late 2018, the father saw the mother with X at a café and there were various other people around. The father caused a commotion. He approached the mother, notwithstanding the AVO which prohibited him from approaching or harassing her. He attacked her verbally, asking her, “How can you do this? You haven’t let me see my son for three weeks. I have a right to see my son”. He said he was going to take X for a walk. The mother told him not to and he said, “Why not? I have every right”. He accused the mother of trying to bankrupt him by requiring supervision. He threatened to take X for a walk. He cut the mother off repeatedly, telling her he was going to take X.
One of the mother’s friends ended up calling the maternal grandfather who then arrived, and the father then accused Mr L of being a person who likes stealing other people’s babies, telling him, “I thought better of you, Mr L”.
The mother felt harassed, intimidated, upset. The father left. He had caused a commotion and a scene. He had been unable to control his emotions once again.
Interim orders of 11/12/18
On 11 December 2018, I made some interim orders by consent. Though I have no specific recollection of making these orders, there is a real likelihood that they would have been made on what would have been a fairly busy first return date. The orders provided for the father to be able to spend time with the child for about three days per week for periods of up to around four hours. The father was to undertake some counselling.
I indicated to the parties in the course of the hearing that had I been aware of the recording which is exhibit 5 in this proceeding I very much doubt that I would have made that order by consent. I very much doubt that I would have done anything but either make a no time order for the father or put in place an order for strict supervision. In that sense, having regard to the father’s behaviours and violence, it could fairly be said that he “got lucky”.
Notwithstanding, the father did not act that way. He very much saw himself as the victim. It was still the mother’s fault why he was not getting to spend as much time with his son as he wanted.
Child Dispute Conference on 25 January 2019
When the father attended for the Child Dispute Conference on 25 January 2019, he denied behaving inappropriately towards the mother, except for what had happened at separation, but even then, he said he knew he had held her down by the arms and told her to talk to him, but he could not recall much else, once again minimising and downplaying what he had done and not taking responsibility.
The Family Consultant noted that the father presented himself as having high level parenting ability, was focused and intense as a parent, anxious about ensuring that X’s needs were prioritised. While he said he did not want to belittle the mother’s parenting, he also made it clear that her parenting could use some improvements. Notably, his dislike of the maternal grandmother was a consistent theme, and he said that he felt as though the maternal grandmother was trying to punish him. He accused the maternal grandmother of effectively having ostracised the biological maternal grandfather from the mother when she was a child and the father was accusing her of doing the same with X towards him.
Parenting arrangements pursuant to the interim orders

In early 2019, after the father had spent some time with X, the father asked to see X for some additional time the following day. His text message said:
Where is the [Ms Damron] I knew and loved? I fear your behaviour is not best for our son. He wants his dad and more time with his dad. Why do you deny him of that?
The mother refused to give him the extra time. She wanted to abide by the Court orders.
In early 2019, the mother emailed the father to tell him she was not blocking him seeing X. He replied:
[Ms Damron], you are blocking me from seeing my son. You are 100 per cent responsible for that.
And:
I don’t see my son due to your and your actions.
I pause here to make the obvious observation that the father was accepting zero responsibility for his own behaviours.
When the mother got the child’s hair cut, the father was furious. This was in mid-2019. He sent the mother text messages, such as:
How dare you?
And:
You should have talked to me about his first haircut, instead of being self-absorbed and selfish.
The father was telling the mother that she was out of control.
Given the anger that the father was displaying, the mother took the maternal grandfather to the changeover that followed. The father again reiterated that the mother should have consulted him about the haircut. She did what she had clearly learned to do, which is not to engage with him, and so in response to that, the father then turned on the maternal grandfather, telling him:
You have a face like a dropped pie.
And asking him:
How do you let her be so ignorant? You’re all ignorant. You need to show me some respect. He’s my son.
Notwithstanding the father’s bullying, aggressive behaviour, and notwithstanding his total lack of insight into the impact of the way he was behaving, the mother agreed that the father have some extended time with X over the period between late 2019 and early 2020.
The co-parenting situation continued to be toxic, even with the mother giving the father extra time.
A particular event that occurred around this stage was that the child experienced some sort of vomiting bug in the early hours of the morning in late 2019. The mother took X to the Emergency Department at the Hospital to get some advice. She wrote about this emergency in the Communication Book. The father later texted her about it, saying:
You should have told me when you decided to take him to hospital. You broke court orders once again with your self-absorbed behaviour. It’s disgusting behaviour. Again, I’ll remind you, I’m [X]’s father and have as much right as you to be included in his life and welfare. So snap out of it.
Following this event, at changeover in late 2019, the father snatched X out of the mother’s arms and he said to her in a mocking way, “I feel harassed, I feel intimidated”, deliberately mocking her to make her feel belittled. He was making fun of her and was clearly furious that the mother had taken the child to hospital without telling him.
I have heard the recording made by the mother of the father telephoning her in relation to the Hospital event. The sorts of things that he said to the mother were as follows:
Don’t fucking ignore me...
Nodding your little head, you ignorant little child…
Get it into your thick fucking head…
The biggest harm to [X] is you and your goddamn family.
Notably, the father rang the mother at a time when he again had X in his care. He said to her:
You’re not having [X] back tonight unless you promise to comply with the orders.
I pause here to observe that I asked counsel at the hearing whether the mother was, in fact, in breach of any of the interim orders that had been made to that point, because I wanted to check whether there was, in fact, some legitimate criticism underpinning the father’s abuse of her. There was no breach. There was no order which required the mother to contact the father, and frankly, a 4am text to take the child to the hospital with a vomiting bug is not necessarily something that one would expect to be receiving a text about at that hour of the morning.
To return to the recording, one other thing that the father said to the mother particularly stood out at me. This is what he said:
You play your little games to get a reaction and you’ll get one.
That was a disturbing statement by the father because I could translate it into other words: “Look what you made me do” - a classic manifestation of family violence; “Look what you made me do, I didn’t do anything wrong. My violent/aggressive behaviour is because of you”.
In any event, as I have indicated, the father had some additional time with X around the period of Christmas 2019.
On an occasion in early 2020, the father was pressing the mother to have overnight time with X, despite it not being provided for in the orders. The mother says, and I accept, that the father said to her, “Did you know the Family Courts are closed? You must be happy with that”. He also accused the mother of being a child thief and said he would never forgive her.
In mid-2020, the father would not hand X back to the mother, telling her in anger, “You’re stopping X from staying over. Look at what you’re doing to X”. He yelled out the car window as he drove off, saying aggressively, “Think of your son instead of yourself and your fucking family”. His behaviour was such that a third party, a lady, came up to the mother afterwards. She said she was an off-duty Police officer and that from what she had seen, the mother should be making a report to the Police. The mother did so.
I should add here that the original AVO which had been made and which expired in early 2019 had already been extended by another year due to the father’s ongoing behaviours towards the mother.
X has an injury; Father blames the mother for it
In early 2021, the proceedings not having come on for trial yet due to reasons that were neither party’s fault, the child had a mishap at a playground when he fell from some play equipment and sustained an injury.
It is apparent from paragraphs 133 and 134 of the mother’s affidavit, which I accept, that the father blames the mother for what was clearly an accident which occurred no doubt quite suddenly. His criticism is that she was not standing right there ready to catch him at that exact moment he fell. His advice to her was that:
He fell and you weren’t there to catch him. End of. You have to be there, [Ms Damron], so stop the excuses and learn from it.
He also said to the mother:
Why are you so blasé? This should never have happened. You should be standing under him to catch him.
The father was setting the standard very, very high when it came to the mother’s parenting, and it was in a sense the gold standard, or the counsel of perfection. As will be seen, the standard that he set for his own parenting was much lower.
Interim orders of 4/5/21
On 4 May 2021, this matter was back before the Court at which time interim orders were made for the mother to have sole parental responsibility. The father, who was then represented by experienced counsel, Mr Murray, consented to orders that he would undertake some specific targeted psychological therapy. The order specifically provided that he would attend upon Ms N at K Psychology Practice for a period of twelve months. This was in respect of a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder that he apparently has dating from a sexual assault upon him when he was 18 or 19 years old. The order set out the requirement that the father undertake this therapeutic intervention, and in the interim, orders were made for the father to continue to spend time with X on weekdays, though not overnights, and the time was unsupervised. It was noted in the order that if the father did not engage in the therapy and provide a report as required in respect of the therapy, then his Amended Response of 12 April 2021 would be dismissed and orders would be made in accordance with the mother’s Amended Initiating Application of 1 April 2021.
I have had a look at the mother’s Amended Initiating Application of 1 April 2021 to remind myself what it said. In essence, the mother was providing in that document for the father to continue to spend limited daytime visits with the child.
It emerges that what could have been a sensible way forward for these parties was an opportunity wasted. The father did not see this psychologist. I accept that he went to see a different psychologist, but I have no evidence before me whatsoever from the psychologist that the father saw, and there is certainly no evidence of anything like the comprehensive treatment that the father was meant to have received.
Father re-partners & then perpetrates further family violence against his new partner
The father had re-partnered at or about this time with a lady.
Regrettably, it appears that that relationship in many ways brought out the worst in the father. In many ways, it highlighted the significant problems that the father had and which he was persistently declining, refusing or being simply unable to address. They were the same sorts of concerns that the mother had raised about the father, the same sorts of concerns that the mother says the paternal grandmother had spoken to her about in relation to the father and also in relation to the paternal grandfather.
Once again, the father’s affidavit evidence in relation to what happened with this partner, whose name is Ms M, is inadequate. Once again, he tells the Court in his affidavit the absolute bare minimum that he thought he could get away with. All that he says in his affidavit filed on 24 November is that it was “unfortunate that the relationship that he had with Ms M had ended.” He talked about her having a couple of children and how he had assisted in their care. That is the total sum of what the father tells me in his affidavit.
It is really quite extraordinary that the father thought that he could get away with simply pretending or putting to one side what had happened in his relationship with Ms M, because what follows is actually rather dramatic, and one would have thought that it would have been ‘front and centre’ of his affidavit material.
It appears that the father and Ms M had some sort of separation around late 2021. That is, some five months after the interim orders were made and at a time when the father was continuing to spend regular unsupervised time with X.
What happened is that in late 2021, the father was messaging Ms M, seemingly persistently and in a similar way to how he was dealing with and talking with the mother in the course of their relationship and subsequently. That is to say, the father was making a nuisance of himself. He wanted to be heard. He wanted to be listened to. He expected to be listened to. He was messaging Ms M to say that:
You said you would do anything to rectify what you had created, and in order for that to happen, we need to talk and have an honest conversation, putting things in the past. I’m not waiting. Come over after work. Let’s go down to the [park] and communicate. Please come over and sort this out and make right. I have food for dinner and everything we need, so come on. I’ll be home in 20 minutes.
She responds:
[Mr Wagoner], I’m going home. With everything that’s happened in the past week, I’m struggling and just need some time alone and to go to sleep early. I feel sick. I’m so emotionally drained and I need to go home. Please understand x.
Not content with Ms M’s very reasonable response, the father sent Ms M the following message:
You need to understand my position here, and imagine if this was the other way around. I need to see you and you need to show me the same respect you expect, especially after everything that’s been exposed. I deserve this. Come put right the wrongs, [Ms M]. There is no other way. If I do not see you tonight, [Ms M], you have made this decision. There is no going back. I have self-respect and I respect you, but it needs to go both ways. I will cook dinner for two, keep up my end. If you show, you show. If you don’t, I know.
This message is not only persistent, it is insensitive, unreasonable, pressuring and, to some extent, coercive. Ms M responds:
I’m about to turn my headphones off and go to bed. I’ve told you I’m not feeling well and you need to respect that.
In response, the father sent her these messages:
Respect goes both ways. Guess what? I’m not feeling well either. Call me back, please, so this does not carry on. I’ll keep my word and video you on Messenger at 7.15.
At 7.15 pm, the father made multiple video calls to Ms M. She did not answer them. The father messaged her:
It says you’re on another call, [Ms M] (sending screenshot indicating that the victim was on another call at the time). Please stop making a mockery of me. Call me back when you’re done. I’m really trying here, as much for you as for me. That’s next level, [M]. No respect from you to me.
The sort of persistent fixation that is demonstrated here by the father towards Ms M mirrors the same sort of fixation and inability to let things go that I listened to in exhibit 5 and that I listened to in exhibit 6, and it is consistent with the nature of the communication that the mother says that the father engaged in with her.
But it gets much worse. Having gone to bed that night at about 7.30pm or 8pm, Ms M was awoken at about 2am because the father had entered her home and turned the light on in her bedroom. He clearly wanted to have the argument or the discussion that Ms M did not want to have.
For all of the respect that he demanded she show him, he was showing her precisely zero respect himself. He told her she owed him honesty, she owed him respect. Just like the mother, Ms M did not say anything, at least initially “because I didn’t want to make him any more mad”. Who can blame her? The father turning up at the hour of 2am in the morning was behaving in a manner that was unhinged. This woman must have been very frightened.
Ms M picked up her mobile phone and said to the father that if he did not leave, she would call the Police. She was hoping he would leave. Instead, he lunged at her, ripped the phone from her hand and threw it across the room. She attempted to stand up so that she could get out of the place. However, the father grabbed her on the upper arms and threw her back onto the bed, more than once.
At one point, Ms M pretended to use an intercom device attached to the security system at the front door of the property as a phone, indicating she was again calling the Police. The father grabbed the device from her hand to prevent her making the call.
Eventually, Ms M was able to put on her dressing gown while she was talking with the father. She was able to walk past him. She got her car keys, her phone. She went down the stairs and told him she was leaving, calling the Police, and she did not want him here when she got back. She drove to the Police Station and arrived there at 2.16 am. She told Police she had feared for her safety during the course of the events as she did not know how far he would take it.
The father was completely remorseless for what he had just done. He texted Ms M:
[Ms M], I struggle to understand you. I have left. I’m letting you know your door is open and you should close it. No idea what you were doing, as you [sic] being very irrational, but you should close your door.
The father was blaming the victim for his own violent behaviour, just as he has consistently done with the mother in this case. Nowhere there do the words appear : “I’m sorry for what I did, Ms M”. The father did not feel sorry for his actions. In my view, he does not feel sorry now.
Police regarded this as a very serious matter, and understandably so. They decided that charges of aggravated break and enter and an assault charge were warranted, as well as taking out an AVO (for Ms M’s protection).
There is some confusion about when the father was meant to talk to Police. They contacted him, and I found the evidence about the father’s movements on the night – or the early hours of that morning rather confusing. Rather than go home himself at 2.16 am or whatever time he left Ms M’s place, the father apparently stayed at a friend’s house. I found that rather odd. I wondered whether the father was, in fact, deliberately staying anywhere he could other than home because he knew he was going to be in a lot of trouble. He adamantly told me that was not the case, and that he was staying with a friend that night because he was working closer to that particular friend’s house the next day. If that is so, I ask the question - what time did he get back to the friend’s house? I find it all confusing and I think it highly likely that the father was simply trying to get away from the Police.
In any event, this is an extremely serious matter. Whether the father was meant to hand himself in to Police, as seems to be suggested in the exhibits, or whether the father had made some arrangement to hand himself in to Police the following day, what is clear is that Police decided that they needed to apprehend the father, and they did so. This occurred in late 2021.
The mother was blissfully ignorant of what the father had done. Despite the father’s criticisms of the mother for not explaining bruises, and not telling him in real time about a 4am visit to the hospital (for the vomiting bug), the father decided to tell the mother lies about what in fact happened with Police.
In late 2021, the father rang the mother at about 7pm. X was with him at that time. The father told the mother that he had been pulled over near Region O and asked the mother to come and collect X, who was with him in the car.
The mother got in her car and went there. When she arrived, Police were standing on either side of the father’s car. She went towards the Police officer on the passenger side and he immediately informed her that his body camera was recording. She said she was there to collect X, and the officer then allowed the father to get X out of the car and hand him to the mother. She took X and left.
As they were driving away, X told the mother that they had been going to see if Region O was open and then the Police came. X said that there was a helicopter above them as well, and that his father apparently said to Police, “My boy is in the car. My boy is in the car”.
It seems evident that at one point the Police were chasing the father’s car in a helicopter while the father had X with him. Certainly, the Police decided to apprehend the father, because from their perspective, he had failed to attend to see them in relation to the matters that had arisen in the early hours of the morning concerning Ms M.
The father told the mother nothing about what he had done. His very serious criminal and violent behaviour was simply deflected. In late 2021 when the father was due to see X again, he said to the mother at handover: “How about the Police the other day?” In my view, he was fishing to find out what the mother knew.
She said, “Yes, that looked quite intense”. He then spun her a false story that there had been a ‘hit and run’ in a nearby suburb with a car that was similar to his etcetera. He admitted that there had been a helicopter and that the Police had taken the car keys.
The mother had no reason not to believe him, save that within a day or so of that, she asked her sister about the ‘hit and run’ and the whole story began to fall apart.
Within days, the mother checked the Local Court registry and saw that the father had these criminal charges brought against him in respect of Ms M. She spoke to the Suburb P Police who said they could not talk to her, given obvious privacy issues.
The mother asked her solicitors to issue subpoenas.
I hasten to add here that, because of the father’s dishonesty, over a matter of months he continued to have unsupervised time with X in accordance with the orders of 4 May 2021. The father should not have had any unsupervised time with this boy at all. Had the matter been before the court in late 2021, I have little doubt that a judge of this Court would have imposed strict supervision on the father or made a no time order.

Once again, the father was “lucky” in this Court, not that he showed the least understanding of that, much less acknowledgment of it in the course of this hearing.
Supervised time is ordered
When the mother was able to ‘join the relevant dots’ and find out what had happened, she then brought an Application in a Case, and on 28 June 2022 I made orders for the father to have supervised time. These were orders which the father himself describes as “bullshit” because he considers there is no risk and no danger to X at all in his care.
What of the father’s response to the allegations about what he actually did to Ms M on that night? Once again, the father’s evidence is contradictory and less than impressive. When he spoke to the Family Report writer for the second report, being Ms B, this is what is recorded at paragraph 36:
Despite pleading guilty to the domestic violence charges, the father denies any wrongdoing, stating that he took a deal to avoid dragging out the court process and additional expense. He reported that he had left his key to [Ms M]’s house at home and had climbed in a window as she was asleep. He denied that they argued as per the police record, and stated that she only became upset when she found out that he had contacted her parents. He stated that he “didn’t raise a hand to her or lay a hand on her”. He alleges that she fabricated the allegations to “try and protect herself” which he insinuated meant that she was trying to trump him exposing her allegedly immoral behaviour to her parents. He also stated that she made the report to hurt him. He denied he had been drinking at the time of the incident.
So to be clear, according to what he told the report writer the father was seemingly a victim of the ‘malicious’ Ms M.
Ironically, when the father consulted Dr Q, a registered psychologist, in an attempt to seek that his criminal matters be dealt with under the forensic provisions of the relevant Mental Health Act, he told a very different story. According to that report, which is before me as exhibit 10, the father admits that, according to paragraph 36 of the report:
His anxiety had increased, he was behaving erratically, and he admitted to being emotionally volatile at the time of the offences. [Mr Wagoner] states that he was not thinking clearly at the time. He described a fugue-like state brought about by a spike in anxiety that he could not contain. In this state, [Mr Wagoner] reported experiencing a disconnection and a lack of continuity between his thoughts, actions and overall surroundings. He reports that he had no intention of doing any harm to his partner and expressed seemingly genuine remorse over his actions.
Dr Q talked about the father having PTSD symptoms, including high anxiety, and he recorded at paragraph 55 of his report that:
It would appear that on the evening of the offence, [Mr Wagoner] was experiencing such a period of hyperarousal. The fear of losing another significant relationship appears to have caused him severe emotional distress, and he experienced high levels of emotional dysregulation. [Mr Wagoner] appears to have been triggered into a fight/flight state in which he felt the need to address the perceived threat of losing his partner immediately, despite the inappropriateness of the hour or the way in which he approached his ex-partner.
As I have indicated, the father was dealt with for entering a dwelling with intent to commit an indictable offence, together with an assault charge. It was serious criminal behaviour. Once again, the father fails to accept responsibility for his own behaviour, a constant theme in this case.
I should note that, after X had been returned to the mother and while the father was briefly in Police custody, the father was served with the AVO protecting Ms M. The AVO included a requirement that the father not contact or approach Ms M.
One might think, given the enormous trouble the father was now in, and given the fact that there were family law proceedings still ‘swirling in the breeze’, that he would have wanted to do all he could to make things right and to make sure that he did not breach that order.
However, breaching the AVO is exactly what the father did.
He breached the order in late 2021 when he twice attempted to video call Ms M. He breached the order in late 2021 when he sent her a picture with a text that said:
Reminder, it only takes one second to say, “I love you. I apologise. Can we talk? You were right”. I don’t want to be at odds. Stop letting pride and ego hold you hostage from happiness in life.
Perhaps more concerningly, he breached the AVO in late 2021 when he attended near Ms M’s workplace, making eye contact with her in her workplace, being R Company, before turning around.
In late 2021, the father breached the AVO when, according to CCTV footage, he directed X to go into the R Company, which X then did. The father directly recruited X to go and approach Ms M. He put X in the middle of a breach of a family violence order. He did so in a manipulative fashion, wherein X was entirely innocent and unaware of what was going on. The father directly involved his son in family violence order breaches.
As I have indicated, for these reasons, and primarily, I might say, the offences themselves from late 2021, in mid- 2022 I made orders for the father’s time with X to be strictly supervised.
The father thereafter seems to have ‘dropped off the radar’ for a period of time. He failed to attend Court on 27 October 2022, and the matter ended up being set down for a possible undefended final hearing on 7 February 2023.
Leadup to possible undefended hearing on 7/2/23
With the final undefended hearing due to occur the next day, and there being orders for strict supervised time in force, the father once again decided to behave in a manipulative fashion.
On 6 February 2023, being X’s first day of kindergarten, the father frankly admits at paragraph 47 and 48 of his affidavit:
On [X]’s first day of school, I turned up to greet him with a packed lunch (chips that he loves and some of his favourite fruits) and a tag for his school bag so he could identify it from any of the other children. [X] was so excited to see me and share his first day experience with his father. We also decided to call [X]’s grandparents in NZ, which [X] was very excited about.
The mother did not want the father there on that day, whether X wanted to see him or not. This Court had specifically made orders for the father to spend time with X strictly supervised for three hours every second Saturday.
While it may not be able to be said as a matter of law that the father attending the school was a direct contravention of that order, it was certainly a contravention of the spirit of the order, at the very least. It was manipulative behaviour. It put the mother in the impossible position, in front of X, of having to, “go along with it.” Once again X, who loves his father, was seeing his father and being happy about it and it was a way for the father to pressure the mother to effectively say – “see, do you really want to cut me out of X’s life?”
Father attends undefended hearing & is given another chance
The matter came before me on 7 February 2023 at which time the mother wanted to proceed with her undefended hearing.
By this time, she had amended her position and, given the father’s behaviours and what she had discovered about Ms M, she was seeking to proceed undefended. The father, effectively pleaded with me to be given a chance and not to proceed on an undefended basis.
Having heard argument about the matter, I gave reasons and orders which appear as exhibit 11 in these proceedings. In a nutshell, I gave the father a chance to run his case properly and I dismissed the mother’s application to proceed undefended.
The father told me, in the course of that hearing, as appears in paragraph 9 of my reasons, that, “There are some further breaches of AVO by the father relating to attending at or about Ms M’s workplace.” On his statements to me:
·these were unintended in that the father did not know that Ms M would be working in the particular place when he was present; and
·on one occasion, X was with him and actually ran up to Ms M to talk to her and the father then had to retrieve him.
The latter event is the one where the CCTV footage shows him instructing the child. The father lied to me. One of the bases upon which the Court acted was a lie – that it was some sort of accidental breach of AVO caused by the child. Ironically it is the father blaming the child, who he professes to love, for his own breach of an AVO. On one view, it is really rather disgraceful. It is certainly manipulative in the extreme.
In any event, I gave the father a chance and I did not proceed undefended. However, I did make an order that the father pay the mother’s costs on an indemnity basis. Those costs were to be agreed or assessed. What I specifically noted in my reasons on the day was that I expected there to be some sensible discussion between the parties as to the amount of costs to be paid and that the father would make a genuine effort to make some instalment payments.
What I said I did not want to see happen was:
The matter come back before me, the father having then given a chance to run his case and for me to be told, oh, well, your Honour, he did not pay us a dollar. The father should not put himself in that position if that matter comes back before me. I hope I have made myself clear to everyone in these reasons. My only focus is on what is best for [X]. [Mr Wagoner] will be given a chance to run his case. It is coming at a cost that I expect to be sorted out and, in fact, paid.
The costs were never assessed. The mother’s solicitor wrote to the father on 20 September 2023 to try to reach agreement about the cost. No agreement was reached.
To summarise where we are at - when the matter came before me this week, the father had not paid one dollar. Exactly what I said I did not want to see. Not one instalment payment. No gesture of good faith, nothing.
Updated Family Report
The Family Report was subsequently updated by Ms B, as I have indicated, and it would be fair to say in his interview the father continued to play the victim card and to continue to assert that the maternal family were, essentially, the problems in this situation. He was singing the same tune that he had been singing since the Child Dispute Conference way back in January of 2019.
The Family Report writer was very concerned about the father’s attitudes and behaviours, and in my view, appropriately so.
In the meantime the father had of course gone on to have some further interactions with X, contrary to the spirit of the 28 June 2022 orders.
He had attended the school in early 2023 with his brother, once again putting the mother in an impossible position. He had seen X at the park in early 2023, once again putting the mother in an impossible position. He had been on the sidelines at X’s sports game in mid-2023, once again putting the mother in an impossible position.
As I have indicated, the matter proceeded to a hearing before me this week.
PARENTING PROCEEDINGS – THE LAW
These proceedings are governed by the provisions of Part VII of the Family Law Act1975 (Cth) (“the Act”).
I do not propose to run through the provisions of Part VII in any detail at this point in time. It suffices to say that I am well aware of the relevant provisions and I certainly am particularly mindful of:
·section 60CA which requires that the Court make orders on the basis that the best interests of the child be regarded as the paramount consideration;
·section 60CC, which sets out the relevant considerations to which a Court must have regard in arriving at a best interests determination; and also
·section 68B of the Act which provides for the power of a Court to make injunctions for the personal protection of people, noting that such orders must be ‘appropriate’ as required by that section.
BEST INTERESTS
I propose now to turn to the best interests considerations in this matter and I do so against the backdrop that the father - very sensibly - abandons any application for equal shared parental responsibility and concedes that the mother should have sole parental responsibility, a concession which is entirely in accordance with the best interests of the child.
So really, the focus for me at this time is now the question of whether the father should have some limited supervised time or no time, together with various other injunctions and related orders.
In terms of section 60CC(2)(a) of the Act, there is no doubt that there are some benefits to the child in maintaining a meaningful relationship with the father. Clearly, they enjoy their time together. I accept the father’s evidence, in his affidavit, when he talks about all of the fun things that he and X do together. He goes into some detail in his affidavit about their mutual love of doing activities together. As a general statement, I accept that the father actively involves himself in X’s life and X actively involves himself in the father’s life. They play sport together. They do lots of things together that are of benefit to the child.
The question in this case is whether there is going to be a net benefit to X in having a meaningful relationship with the father. That is really the pivotal question in this case.
In terms of risk in section 60CC(2)(b), this is obviously where the rubber meets the road in this case.
The Family Report writer held very serious concerns about the father’s history of family violence against the mother and against Ms M, but also his inability and unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity of what he had done and to accept responsibility in any way. She recorded the following, at paragraph 96 and on in the family report:
96.While the father has raised the mother’s mental health, parenting behaviours and willingness to co-parent as the main concerns in this matter, it appears that [X] and the mother’s experience of family violence is the primary risk in relation for [X]. Experiences of family violence can impact on a carer’s ability to provide emotionally attuned, regulated, reflective and empathic parenting of the children. If the mother’s version of events is found to be accurate, it would appear that the mother’s mental health deteriorated only following the behaviour of the father towards her and she initially sought to get assistance for herself to manage this response rather than for the father to change his behaviour towards her.
97.Issues of family violence are of significant concern in this matter. The father has acknowledged that some of his behaviour towards both the mother and [Ms M] has been unacceptable, however, he has continually sought to blame them for triggering this behaviour. He demonstrated a concerning lack of insight in understating of the impact of his behaviour on, or empathy for, his victims.
I respectfully agree with what is recorded there by Ms B.
98.If the court were to find that the pattern of reported behaviour of the father, both throughout the relationship and after separation was accurate…
and I pause here to say that it is:
…then it raises significant concerns about the future risks of the father undermining [X]’s relationship with the mother. The father continually sought to bring attention to a number of unreasonable criticisms of the mother’s parenting and allegations of the mother having self-invested motivations in the parenting dispute which he clearly believes were valid.
I accept that there is legitimacy in that observation. It is apparent, from paragraphs 23 to 25 of the Family Report, that the father was clearly painting the picture to Ms B that the mother in seeking a ‘no time’ order was motivated by her own jealously about the closeness of the relationship between the father and X. The father considered that the maternal grandmother was a ‘puppet master’- the mother, apparently, being one of the puppets. And he described X was the maternal grandmother’s “little project”. As I noted earlier, these are the same sorts of complaints he had been making for years.
Ms B says:
99.If the allegations of family violence in this matter are consistent with the information obtained for this assessment then it would appear the nature of the family violence is consistent with coercive controlling family violence and that the primary perpetrator would be the father. Coercive controlling violence involves an ongoing pattern of threat or force used to dominate a person or for that person to feel threatened or intimated. Risks associated with this form of violence are thought to increase during occasions when an abusive parent perceives a loss of power and control. For example, during the parental separation or during a court process.
I pause here to make these observations. The father was physically violent to the mother at or about the time of separation. At the time when the father thought that his relationship with Ms M was on the rocks he entered her home at 2am. At a time when he was losing power and control, in terms of having an AVO against him for Ms M’s protection, the father went on to breach the AVO.
Ms B says:
100.The level of risk associated with this form of family violence can be assessed by examining features and characteristics in the primary perpetrator. Patterns of abusive, punitive and/or anti-social behaviour combined with self-entitlement, poor insight and poor child focus are further indicators of the severity of risk of this form of family violence. An assessment of the degree of risk of coercive controlling family violence can also be informed by an analysis of whether the primary perpetrator inflicts physical or psychological harm on a child and/or actively uses or manipulates a child in the dynamics of abusive or coercive control within the family system.
In this case, the father has exhibited patterns of abusive and punitive behaviour, in terms of the mother. He has engaged in anti-social behaviour, in terms of assaulting the mother, in terms of attending at Ms M’s home and breaching the AVO. He has a sense of self-entitlement that would be obvious to anybody who sat in this Court and realised that he was portraying himself as the victim in circumstances where he has behaved in this way and where he has no insight whatsoever as to why this Court made orders for him to have supervised time, much less any belief that such orders are appropriate.
The father actively used or manipulated X in the dynamics of abuse and coercive control:
·in terms of Ms M, by instructing him to go into her workplace;
·in terms of the mother, at times when X was in his care, by making threats to the mother such as occurred in the late 2019 phone call. And also at separation when he held the child on his side of the bed. The father has demonstrated a willingness or a desire to put the child in the middle, as it were, when he turned up at the school, when he turned up at the park, when he turned up at sports. He has been more than willing to manipulate X.
Having said these things, I want to be clear in saying I have no doubt that the father deeply loves X, is devoted to his son and wants what he thinks is best for him. But the father does not see the ‘elephant in the room’. That is, the coercive and manipulative nature of his interactions. The father’s behaviour, in short, raises real concerns and paragraph 100 of the Family Report resonates strongly in this case.
At paragraph 101 of the Family Report, Ms B considered that, based on the information available, the current psychological risks of family violence to X and the mother were high and that the further exposure to X of such behaviour between the parents would be extremely detrimental to X’s long-term emotional wellbeing.

Ms B refers to the significant developmental consequences which occur with children who live in family violent situations, including manifestation of significant mental health difficulties including anxiety, depression, trauma, poor self-esteem, increased aggression, anti-social behaviour, self-harm, lower social competence, mood problems, delayed developmental achievement of milestones, problems at school, peer conflict and loneliness. She opines that:
103.Further, [X] is likely to become more aware of and, in turn, more impacted by the experience of the father perpetrating psychological abuse, emotional abuse and/or utilising dynamics in the co-parenting relationship to control the mother as he gets older. It is also a risk that if the father’s perpetration of intimidating and controlling behaviour towards the mother is able to continue, that the mother’s capacity to be emotionally available and attentive to [X] will be compromised.
Ms B notes that:
104.If the mother’s evidence as to the child’s behaviours and comments in relation to his time with the father are correct, then there are indicators that the father is using coercive control tactics on [X] who is highly susceptible to influence.
This is a reference to the child at interview telling Ms B that he shares secrets with the father. When asked about what these secrets were, X would not disclose except to say they were “special secrets.” In the witness box the father said he had no idea what X was talking about in this respect but he thought it might relate to X telling him “Daddy, I could sneak over to your house.” That is to say, the secret topic, if you like, is the topic of seeing his father. (The father also gave an example of the child having a lollipop at the Contact Centre which is a fairly innocuous ‘secret’.)
The concern I have is that the father has had an awful lot of unsupervised time with X that he should not have had (from late 2021 to mid-2022) and given the manipulative behaviours of the father as exhibited in these proceedings, I am satisfied that he most certainly would have attempted to manipulate X on at least some of these visits by making comments adverse to the mother or positive about himself. And I am also concerned by the mother’s evidence that the child said to her after the “chance” meeting at the park in early 2023 that “Daddy’s plan worked” or words to that effect. I have real concerns about the father’s attitude towards X and whether he might manipulate him as part of a misguided but fundamentally coercive and controlling dynamic.
Ms B says that:
100…An assessment of the degree of risk of coercive controlling family violence can also be informed by an analysis of whether the primary perpetrator inflicts psychological or physical harm and/or actively uses or manipulates a child in the dynamics of abuse or coercive control within the family system.
The father has done these things.
Ms B also expressed a concern that:
Risks can escalate if the primary perpetrator perceives further reduction in power through a court process.
It would be fair to say that Ms B, in general, holds alarming concerns about the father’s attitudes in terms of his long history of coercive and controlling behaviour towards the mother, and his unrelenting criticism of her which is also self-evident from the material.
The father’s coercive controlling family violence and its potential impact on the child cannot be understated. It has the potential to impact X in many different ways, as identified by Ms B, but also, I consider a real concern is the role modelling that the father might provide for his son. It would be disastrous if X were to grow up thinking that you should deal with your intimate partners the way that his father does.
The father did enrol in a men’s behavioural change program in late 2023: see exhibit 7. In the witness box he was asked why he had done so. He said that it was because of his previous behaviour in the past and that he wanted to show the mother he was committed to alleviating the concerns she has.
I do not know, as I sit here, whether the father will be accepted into this program. I rather doubt he will. Certainly, there is no guarantee of any kind that he will be allowed in. One of the well-known courses relating to family violence perpetration is known as “Taking Responsibility”. It can safely be said that whatever the exact content of the men’s behavioural change program, taking responsibility for what he, in fact, did would have to be a core and, one would think, fundamental element of this course. The father has taken practically no responsibility for anything he has done in his case. His affidavit reads as a sword against the mother rather than a shield, in terms of his own behaviour. He prefers to criticise her parenting and tell the Court about how the child sustained an injury. He prefers to talk to the report writer about how the mother could be a much better parent than what she is but that she is so fixated on him.
I see very, very little evidence of any capacity for change and this is all against the backdrop of the report writer also noting that the father has demonstrated a rigidity of thought and a seeming inability to tolerate views different to his own. These are longstanding character traits of the evidence before me.
I consider that the father’s coercive controlling family violence places the child at very high risk of future harm and certainly an unacceptable risk which, at best, would warrant supervision and may more appropriately be dealt with as a no time order, and that is a matter that I will turn to shortly.
The other major issue for the father in terms of risk is his mental health.
I do not know exactly what the father’s mental health condition is. According to the material, he was sexually assaulted by a woman when he was 18 or 19 years old and he has some post-traumatic stress disorder or related symptoms arising out of that particular event. But I also have the report of Dr Q, which was provided to the Local Court and from which I have already quoted, in which there is a reference to the father behaving erratically and being emotionally volatile and experiencing a ‘fugue-like state’. The evidence of Dr Q also states that the father has recurrent, involuntary, intrusive, distressing memories, not only of the sexual abuse but also losing his child and his ex-partner and that he reported regular periods of disturbed sleep in which he had nightmares about his past experiences of trauma.
According to the report, Mr Wagoner told Dr Q that he also experiences intense periods of distress followed by dissociative symptoms (memory loss, detachment and distorted perceptions) and hypervigilance in response to stimuli that remind him of his traumas, such as movies or news reports in which childhood sexual assault is featured.
Mr Wagoner reported low self-worth, poor self-image, low self-esteem and he acknowledged periods of paranoia and frequent instability in his moods and stated he could become irritable and restless, but he linked this to his mental ill-health. He reported being stressed at times and feeling emotionally dysregulated.
The father has quite significant, and perhaps profound, mental health issues which he does not appear to have received comprehensive treatment for. Though he has been to see a psychologist, any evidence as to her treatment of him is not before me in these proceedings, although I do have before me some emails, as exhibit 15, that the paternal grandmother sent to the father which were, essentially, suggestions that the psychologist he was seeing could, perhaps, review and give her opinion on. The emails, effectively, are quite critical of the mother and of her mental health and very much paint the father as the victim.
I have concerns about the father’s mental stability and what treatment, if any, he is receiving. He was taking anti-depressants at one point. He has now stopped doing so. He clearly experiences some issues.
I am troubled by the concept of the father becoming dissociative or perhaps going into some ‘fugue-like state’ as referred to by Dr Q.
When the father was in the witness box I asked him, “Could you provide a safe environment for X if you were in a state like that when he was with you?” Sensibly, his first reaction was to say, “No.” But then he backtracked and said, “Yes, X would be safe because I feel calm or I feel human when he’s with me.”
Children should not be the source of a parent’s stability, in terms of their mental health. It is a role that is way too great for X to have to carry, knowingly or unknowingly. I raised the father’s latter answer with Ms B, and indicated to her that I was more concerned by the father’s second attempt to answer the question than his first. She agreed with me.
I consider that the father’s mental health is something of an unknown, that the Court is seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and that to the extent the father has mental health issues, he really, genuinely needs to seek help for them.
To be clear, it is not my role, it is not the role of this Court to “judge” people who might have depression or post-traumatic stress or anxiety or a personality disorder or any other mental health condition. The Court is not interested in putting labels on people except to the extent it might assist in terms of understanding expert evidence about various conditions. The label is not what matters. What matters is the conduct. There are plenty of parents that have depression or other mental health conditions and they are perfectly adequate parents. But when a parent behaves in a way that is dangerous and inappropriate for a child and where mental health is a background issue as part of that behaviour, and where the parent will not or has not addressed or even acknowledged the mental health issues, therein lies the problem for the Court.
The father poses unacceptable risks of harm to X. The question is whether there should be a ‘no time’ or a ‘strictly supervised’ time order.
In terms of the additional best interests considerations in section 60CC(3), I have no doubt X would love to see more rather than less of his father. He said as much in the Family Report, at paragraph 80. He clearly enjoys spending time with his father. There are no two ways about that, and I have little doubt the father greatly enjoys his time with X as well.
The report writer did notice that X was somewhat aggressive and dysregulated when he was with the father during the interviews and observations for the updated report. She also noted that in the earlier report that there was some distress felt by the father and that was considered to have had a rub-off effect on X.
The father strongly rejects that his own distress impacted X in that first report. But the issue that arises, from the perspective of Ms B, is that although X wants to, or says he wants to, see more of his father, that he has an emotional need to have his father connect and assist X to regulate himself and that the father may not have the skills to do that adequately.
Certainly, the child wants to see his father. His wishes are a consideration for the Court.
In terms of section 60CC(3)(b), I have addressed the father’s relationship with X. I do not really need to address the mother’s relationship because, on any view, her relationship with X continues regardless of what orders the Court makes.
The father, certainly, has negative views of the mother and I am concerned that these could be imparted to X as well as negative concerns expressed about the maternal family.
The father’s family have had limited opportunity to have much interaction with X. In many ways those relationships are ‘collateral damage’ in this case, which is unfortunate but not an uncommon phenomenon in a case such as this.
In terms of participating in X’s life, the father briefly appears to have dropped out of this case in late 2022 for reasons known only to him. However, I think it could fairly be said that the father has never given up on X and, indeed, he has actively and consistently set out to have a relationship with him. He has seen the case through to a final hearing, which I have little doubt was very confronting to him and a very difficult experience. I must say that the father certainly has an intention to and a desire to continue to be involved in X’s life.
In terms of child support, the father has paid very little. That is the simple reality of the matter. He is self-employed. My strong sense of the father, having seen him in the witness box and noting his actions or inactions in relation to the indemnity costs order, are that I would be surprised if he would do anything other than minimise whatever amount of child support he thinks he can get away with in the future. That is to say, I am sure he will structure his finances as a self-employed person in such a way as to minimise his child support.
In terms of the changes in circumstance that would arise as a result of the orders that I make, whatever happens, there will be a change for X. The current arrangements cannot continue. It is common ground that they are coming to an end. The father has been having supervised time on a fortnightly basis since the middle of last year. Before then, he was having unsupervised time for daytime periods. On any view, his time now drops back to, at best, once per month, at worst for him four times per year, or on the mother’s case, no time at all.
Change is inevitable. If I order that the child have no time with his father at all, it will be a blow to X and it will be something the mother would have to manage. She has already taken steps to investigate treatment in relation to counselling and the like for X. It will be no easy task for her because X clearly loves his father and circumstances are such that the child will, no doubt, wonder where his father is or what has happened. X may even blame himself for not seeing the father or X may think that he did something wrong. These are difficult matters.
There are also long-term problems for children as well because sometimes children, as they get older, feel abandoned or rejected by a parent and sometimes they might become defiant or lash out at the resident parent and go looking for an idealised absent parent.
All of these things are problems. ‘No time’ orders are not happy orders, if I can use that expression, for Courts to make. Sometimes they are in the best interests of children but they are by no means a risk-free option.
On the father’s primary proposal, I would order that he spend one visit per month with the child for three hours at a contact centre. This is also rather a difficult thing for the child to cope with. The fact of the matter is that the father would be spending very limited time with his son in a strictly supervised environment that would be adequately safe, but then at the end of each month there would be the longing, no doubt, of the child to want to spend more time with the father, and I have little doubt that X would be hassling his mother to say, why can’t I see Dad at the park? Why can’t I see Dad here? Why can’t I see Dad there?
It will be a constant struggle for the mother, at least in the short to medium term and probably long-term as well, to have to constantly tamp down the child’s desire to spend more time with his father based on an unrealistic assessment – no criticism intended of X – but an unrealistic assessment as to his father’s parenting capacity.
This is a matter that was raised by the report writer who said:
115.The Court may wish to consider the benefits and challenges associated with the father spending supervised time with [X] or spending no time with [X].
116.Should the Court consider the father spending supervised time with [X] to mitigate risks, he would benefit by:
-being protected from any potential denigration of the mother or maternal family.
- the time spent with [X] would be activity based.
-the supervisor being responsible for ensuring the needs of [X] were met in case the father was not attuned to him.
- [X] would be protected from the risk associated with changeovers.
117The challenge of supervised time in a contact centre is that [X] would be set up to have an unrealistic view of the father’s parenting and the potential quality of his relationship with him. Furthermore, supervised time should be limited and purposeful to allow for work to be done to mitigate the risks. If the risks are, as identified, and if the father (as in this assessment) continues to dismiss any coercive controlling family violence behaviour despite appearing to have engaged in considerable therapeutic work then there would be limited purpose of the continuation of supervision in any meaningful or sustained sense.
Ms B goes on to talk about possible family supervision at paragraph 118, but I dismiss family supervision in this case, particularly given that:
(a)no party seeks it; and
(b)the content of exhibit 15 would demonstrate that, as is so often the case, ‘blood is thicker than water’ and I could not rely on the father’s family to be any protection whatsoever.
The issue then is - what is the benefit of the father spending this supervised time? What is the benefit for the child? Whether it be once per month, which will leave this grasping problematic relationship, or whether it would be an even lesser relationship of four visits per year. The four visits per year proposal would also be painful for X and, in some ways, perhaps even more painful because he would be grasping to want to see more of his father afterwards, only to be told that it would be another three month delay.
Whatever order I make, no time, a once monthly visit, or four times a year identity contact, will cause pain for X. I have no doubt. It is a question of the Court arriving at the best balance in what is a difficult case.
The question is - what is the benefit of there being an ongoing supervision order as a long-term order? There is plenty of authority from the Full Court of the Family Court that long-term supervision orders are not, generally, in the best interests of children. The father, in this case, came to Court very adamantly saying that the supervision order that the Court had put in place in mid-2022 was “bullshit” and that he did not think that such an order was necessary. So if I put in place a supervised time order, I have very little confidence that the father will do anything other than see himself as a total victim of the Court process, a victim of the mother, and I very much expect to see him most unhappy with such an outcome.
In terms of section 60CC(3)(e) of the Act, there are no real practical difficulties in this case in terms of spending time. Supervisors can be paid for, if I decide that that is in the best interests of the child.
In terms of parental capacity and attitude towards parenting, the father’s capacity to parent X in an emotionally healthy way, in my view, is very limited. I won’t reiterate the findings that I have already made in relation to risk.
I am concerned about the father’s intensely negative attitude towards the mother as well as his breaches of AVO in respect of Ms M - as well as his breaching the spirit of the orders made by the Court in mid-2022 by attending at the child’s school, attending at sports and attending at the park.
I should add here that, although the father has had some psychological treatment, there is no evidence before the Court as to how the treatment has impacted him in a positive way. Moreover, at paragraph 66 of the Family Report, the father accepted that he had done the Circle of Security parenting course but, to quote from the report, the father said he “hadn’t really learned anything” stating that he had always been in a caring role as part of a big family and was “very comfortable” parenting.

The father also said that his psychologist had attended his house to observe he and X and had produced a report saying that she had observed a loving, caring relationship between them and that the father was child-focused and well prepared, amongst other positive observations. Given the nature of the issues in this case, the fact that this is the content or the apparent content of a psychological report not produced to the Court gives the Court no comfort in any event.
In terms of attitudes to parenting, the father’s attitude is that he has never been satisfied with any proposal the mother has made, that he has always wanted more time with X, that he is persistently and rigidly critical of the mother and her family, and that he takes just about no responsibility for anything he has done. The standard that he sets for her is very different to the standards that he sets for himself. I cannot imagine how the father would have reacted if the mother had been in a Police chase, as had happened with him, with X in the car and she had not told him about it. I very much doubt that he would have been sanguine about that situation.
In terms of the child, given his age, I need to be mindful of his attachments. Ms B said in the Family Report that:
95.… [X] requires a consistent, safe and secure home base where his psychological and emotional needs are nurtured. Children in this age group are a little less dependent on their parents, however, the majority of their physical and emotional needs still need to be provided for by a primary attachment figure. This is a critical time in development when children are starting to formulate a more complex concept of self and when there is a greater focus on feelings and ideas. That is, foundations for their self-esteem are developing. Children of this age have a developed sense of empathy and view the world almost entirely from their own perspective. This means that they feel for others in distress and often believe they are the cause.
I have addressed family violence and family violence orders and I will not repeat myself.
I am mindful of the need to avoid future litigation, if possible. This case commenced in 2018 and it has taken, for one reason or another, five years for today to arrive. Today, in many ways, is a watershed. It is the end of this case, this long-running saga. This boy has been stuck between two parents fighting about him for the overwhelming bulk of his life. They have been in litigation over him since he was a baby. The benefit to this case ending is enormous for all parties concerned and, most specifically, for X.
The order proposed by the mother that the father have ‘no time’ is, without doubt, the one that is least likely to lead to the institution of further proceedings but it comes at an obvious cost. Orders for the father to spend supervised time with X create an increased risk of future litigation because of the risk of the father becoming dysregulated at handover or, otherwise, saying or doing things which, over time, plant a seed in X’s head that then cause him to want to spend more time with his father and, otherwise, rebel against the arrangements.
X needs stability. A ‘no time’ order, though tragic in many respects, does give stability.
I am also mindful of the impact of orders on the mother. The mother has clearly felt very anxious about having to deal with the father, both during the relationship and since separation. I accept her evidence as to the anxiety she experiences and that, from her perspective, she would be a lot less anxious if she did not have to deal with the father in the future. Such anxiety may, potentially, impact on her parenting capacity on a longer term basis, if the Court makes orders for ongoing supervised time, particularly if the orders prove to be problematic, as I have already indicated I think that they will.
CONCLUSION & ORDERS
In terms of ‘no time’ -v- limited supervised time, I have already indicated that long term supervision orders by themselves are usually not in a child’s best interest. Ordinarily, a supervised time order would be made as a ‘stepping stone’ to something more meaningful. We are a long way from the father, in this case, being at the crossroads of change and accepting responsibility. He may never get there. He is already a man of 42 years of age. He has had an awfully long time to address his problems. He should have undertaken a men’s behaviour course years ago, not just enrolled for it on the eve of a trial whilst still, essentially, denying responsibility. He is nowhere near the crossroads of change.
In my view, the father is a long way off being in a position to play a meaningful role in the child’s life or a role that would be regarded by the child as meaningful. The disadvantages of identity time and once per month supervised contact time, in my view, outweigh the advantages of it. The father will be unhappy with whatever orders are made. The child will be unhappy with whatever orders are made, at least in the short term, but stability and the capacity for the child to grow up without an environment of manipulation, coercion and control, in my view, overwhelmingly favour me making the order sought by the mother, tragic and sad as that order is in many respects.
For these reasons I propose to make the orders set out at the commencement herein.
I am going to include a specific Notation that it is the Court’s intention to draw the New South Wales Police’s attention to section 68C of the Family Law Act. Section 68C provides that a Police officer can arrest a person without a warrant if they consider that a person is in breach of a section 68B personal protection injunction. That is to say, I want the injunction to have some ‘teeth’.

I certify that the preceding two hundred and sixty-four (264) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment of Judge Betts.
Associate:
Dated: 1 December 2023

File number(s):	NCC 3521 of 2018
Judgment of:	JUDGE BETTS
Date of judgment:	1 December 2023
Catchwords:	FAMILY LAW – Parenting – final orders – one child aged 6 years – whether the child should spend no time with the father or limited supervised time – where the father has a long history of perpetrating coercive and controlling family violence – where the father exhibits an inability and complete unwillingness to acknowledge the gravity of what he had done and to accept responsibility in any way – where the father actively used or manipulated the child in the dynamics of abuse and coercive control – where the father’s coercive controlling family violence places the child at very high risk of future harm – best interests of the child to spend no time nor have any communication with father.
Legislation:	Family Law Act1975 (Cth)
Division:	Division 2 Family Law
Number of paragraphs:	264
Date of last submission/s:	30 November 2023
Date of hearing:	28, 29 and 30 November 2023
Place:	Newcastle
Counsel for the Applicant:	Mr Graham
Solicitors for the Applicant:	Powe & White Family Lawyers
Counsel for the Respondent:	Mr Flanigan
Solicitors for the Respondent:	Grant & Co

NCC 3521 of 2018
FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA (DIVISION 2)
BETWEEN:	MS DAMRON Applicant
AND:	MR WAGONER Respondent

ORDER MADE BY:	JUDGE BETTS
DATE OF ORDER:	1 DECEMBER 2023