Liana & Perlie
[2023] FedCFamC1F 1083
•15 December 2023
FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA
(DIVISION 1)
Liana & Perlie [2023] FedCFamC1F 1083
File number(s): PAC 5373 of 2020 Judgment of: JARRETT J Date of judgment: 15 December 2023 Catchwords: FAMILY LAW – PARENTING – Paucity of evidence – Single expert psychiatric report – Respondent suffering paranoid delusions – No benefit to children of meaningful relationship with respondent – Orders made for children to live with applicant and spend no time with respondent Division: Division 1 First Instance Number of paragraphs: 37 Date of hearing: 27 November 2023 Place: Parramatta Counsel for the Applicant: Mr White Solicitors for the Applicant: Barry F Cosier & Associates Solicitors for the Respondent: Litigant in person Counsel for the Independent Children’s Lawyer: Mr Jackson Solicitors for the Independent Children’s Lawyer: Sydney West Family Lawyers ORDERS
PAC 5373 of 2020 FEDERAL CIRCUIT AND FAMILY COURT OF AUSTRALIA (DIVISION 1)
BETWEEN: MR LIANA
Applicant
AND: MS PERLIE
Respondent
INDEPENDENT CHILDREN'S LAWYER
ORDER MADE BY:
JARRETT J
DATE OF ORDER:
15 DECEMBER 2023
THE COURT ORDERS THAT:
1.The applicant have sole parental responsibility for the children X born 2016, Y born 2017 and Z born 2019.
2.The children live with the applicant.
3.The respondent may communicate with the children by forwarding to them letters, cards and gifts on one occasion per month to the applicant’s residential address, and for this purpose, the applicant shall be permitted to vet the letters, cards and gifts to ensure that the communication is not abusive or derogatory, or that the children are not referred to by any names other than X, Y and Z.
4.The respondent is restrained from approaching the children's school or childcare.
5.The applicant shall provide to the respondent via text message or email information regarding the children's:
(a)school progress, including provide previous school reports as an when they are received;
(b)non-urgent health, in circumstances where there is an update assessment and/or report that have been prepared;
(c)medical emergencies and/or serious injury or illness.
6.The applicant shall keep the respondent advised in writing of his telephone number at all times and notify the respondent of any change within 48 hours of such change.
7.Each parent and his/her servants and agents be restrained and an injunction is granted restraining each of them from:
(a)criticising or making derogatory comments about the other parent or any other members of that parents household or extended family in the presence or hearing of any of the children or allowing any other third party to do so;
(b)discussing the other parent or court events in their home in the presence of the hearing of the children.
8.Otherwise all other outstanding applications, including the orders sought by the respondent for property adjustment as set out in the Response to Initiating Application filed 22 December, 2020 are dismissed.
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
JARRETT J:
This case concerns property adjustment orders and parenting orders for three children, X (aged 7), Y (aged 6) and Z (aged 4). They presently live with their father, the applicant, pursuant to interim orders made on 9 April, 2021. Save for four short occasions of professionally supervised time in late 2021/early 2022, they have not spent time with their mother, the respondent, since a recovery order was executed and the children removed from her care and placed with the applicant on 9 April, 2021.
The proceedings were listed for trial before me by an order made on 7 September, 2023. Despite directions for the filing of trial material, the respondent did not file anything. The applicant filed two affidavits of evidence-in-chief for the trial (one by himself and the other by his foster mother). However, they were not filed in accordance with the trial directions and there being no good reason advanced to grant to the applicant to rely upon them, no leave was given.
I have the benefit of an independent children’s lawyer for the children. She relied upon a single expert report by Dr B, a consultant psychiatrist, that was released to the parties on 4 August, 2022.
When we commenced on the first morning of the trial, the respondent applied for an adjournment of the trial. However, I refused that because no good reason was demonstrated for the adjournment. Despite having no evidence before the court (leave having been refused to rely upon his late filed material), the applicant did not apply for an adjournment, but joined with submissions for the independent children’s lawyer that the trial should proceed on the basis of the single expert’s report alone, the evidence of the applicant being of such low probative value in any event that I was unlikely to be assisted by it even if it was before me. Having scanned the applicant’s affidavits of evidence-in-chief for the purposes of the application for leave to rely upon them, I accepted that submission.
Thus, this trial was conducted upon the basis that the only evidence I have is that of Dr B set out in his report dated 27 May, 2022 the documents tendered by counsel for the independent children’s lawyer (exhibits 1 – 8) and the documents tendered by counsel for the applicant (exhibits 9 and 10). That evidence is only relevant to the parenting orders. I have no evidence whatsoever with respect to the property adjustment proceedings. Consequently, the property adjustment proceedings will be dismissed.
No party wished to cross-examine Dr B. His evidence was uncontroversial.
Dr B interviewed the parties and the children for the purposes of his report. He was satisfied that he was able to assess Mr Liana and Ms Perlie to an adequate standard such that his clinical opinion could be relied upon. He interviewed the children on 15 February, 2022 as well as the respondent and Ms C, a child protection case worker. Dr B also considered extensive material provided to him by the parties, but principally the independent children’s lawyer.
As to his interview with the respondent, Dr B noted:
(a)the respondent was interviewed via video;
(b)the respondent cooperated well with the interview and seemed to be punctual and managed the technology well;
(c)she was alert and oriented. the respondent was casually dressed;
(d)the respondent’s speech was normal in tone and volume;
(e)there was no abnormality of perception as she denied hearing any voices or having any hallucinatory experiences;
(f)the respondent’s affect was reactive but she was quite serious and at times a little upset when worrying about the children;
(g)the respondent’s cognitive function appeared normal;
(h)she was orientated in time, place and person;
(i)the respondent’s thoughts demonstrated delusional ideas;
(j)the respondent seemed to have a complex paranoid belief system regarding her children and other children that she believes are hers;
(k)the respondent stated that she has a teenager daughter D and E and another child F and their father is Mr G;
(l)there are also twins H and J;
(m)the respondent said that she has spoken to the Police about these children;
(n)her belief is that the child called X is actually an imposter who really is H;
(o)the respondent believes that she gave birth to these children when her own name was a different name;
(p)the children Y, X and Z were born when she was known as her current name;
(q)she has also changed her name back from Perlie to another surname;
(r)the respondent seemed quite thought disordered and she would deviate from topic to topic and had some tangential thinking; and
(s)the respondent did not have insight into her mental illness.
The respondent told Dr B that she was three years of age when her mother died and five when her father died. She initially started saying that her father was Mr K and her mother was Ms L but in fact her biological father was called Mr M and then she later mentioned Mr N. She stated that as a small child she witnessed her mother’s death and then she lived with the man who killed her, Mr N. She told Dr B that her family situation was hard. Although she had some work after school, she had not been able to work since having children.
The respondent told Dr B that she has an injured back and a medical condition. She said that she was sent to hospital and had fractures caused by the applicant. She said that she had a CT scan which showed a tumour but it was not dangerous. She denied drug or alcohol problems although she did use marijuana before she became pregnant and occasionally tried illicit drugs but she has not used for at least 2 years before X was born. She told Dr B that she was unsure of the last time she tried marijuana.
She claimed that she had been involved in two motor vehicle accidents when she was known by another name but Dr B could not get clear information about when or where these accidents occurred or what injuries she sustained.
When Dr B asked if anything else traumatic had happened to her, the respondent expressed what appeared to be delusional beliefs. She claimed that she had been kidnapped and held by some bikies and a woman named Ms P was murdered in front of her by giving her drugs and she was kept in the house with her. Ms P died but the respondent was not sure what happened to the body. The respondent says that she was then drugged. She named the people she says drugged and kept her in captivity. She claimed that the applicant was associated with those people and Mr N (her step-father) was as well.
The subpoenaed material reviewed by Dr B. The hospital notes of late 2019 and mid-2019 from Q Hospital indicated that there was a possible drug induced psychosis. The Police noted in early 2020 that the respondent believed that X was delusional. There was a history of a 5‑week admission to the R Mental Health Unit in 2015. The Police notes also raised concerns that the respondent had attempted or threatened to end her life in front of the children. Dr B did not think it clear if the respondent had psychosis earlier than 2014. In 2014 the respondent was admitted for four or five weeks to the R Mental Health Unit with a psychosis (possibly drug induced) and a delusion about having lost a baby at that time. On 4 May, 2021 departmental notes indicated that the respondent was in a delusional state and that the three children were found to be dishevelled. Dr B concluded that the respondent had at least three admissions to mental health units for treatment of psychosis, firstly 2014 to the R Mental Health Unit, 2019 to Q Hospital and in 2020 to Q Hospital. He observed that the respondent still had ideas of a paranoid nature persisting from the first admission in 2014 about having lost a baby at that time.
When asked about the admission to S Hospital, the respondent said that she believed that she had lost a son and that she was pregnant and the reason she lost the son was that one of her abductors (who was a brother of the applicant perhaps) had jumped onto her stomach. She said that she lost the pregnancy. She said that in 2014, she was in hospital for a month following losing her son, but she denied being in a psychosis.
When asked about the first admission to Q Hospital she said that the applicant had allowed people to abuse her and X. She said the applicant had people come into the house and rape her children, H and Y, in front of her. She said they hung X and her by the neck from the pergola at the back of the house. When asked how she survived she said, “I don’t know. But I remember [X] hanging beside me.” She said that the applicant was aware of the rapes. She also said that X was raped in front of her and that there was a line of men and all the adults raped her. She said that she had been given a dose of drugs and was sitting on the lounge and she was paralysed and could not move while all this occurred. Gradually, she recovered over the following weeks and she was given drug injections. She said that the applicant “knew about it and was involved with all the rapes as well and he watched.”
She told Dr B that she was worried about X who was not with the applicant. H has been swapped for her and she had no idea where the applicant had put X.
She told Dr B that she has anxiety and depression, but no specific support. She was living on her own and she did not have any specific health professionals.
Dr B further recorded (p.16):
The FACS workers, [Ms T], [Ms U] and [Ms V] were helping her. However, “[Ms T] brought [Ms W] to my house. She worked for [AA Services] but she was involved with my mother when my mother was pregnant with [Mr BB] and stole her baby.” “[Ms W] pops up throughout my whole life.” “[Ms W] wrote to the court that I don’t have these other children.” [Ms Perlie] believes there is a conspiracy against her perpetrated by [Ms W] and [Mr Liana]. She was also suspicious that [Ms W] signed her report with paint from the computer which made it look like it had been copied.
The respondent had earlier identified Ms W as one of her abductors to Dr B.
Dr B spoke to Ms U a child protection case worker who had been involved with the respondent. Of the respondent, she said:
She thought there was a [AA Services] conspiracy with [Ms W] to steal children. She claimed that she had 4 older children who had been taken from her. We searched for other children and there was no indication that there had been any other children than the 3 children in question. [Ms Perlie] believes that [X] has really been replaced by [H]. She believes that [Mr Liana] brought men to sexually assault her and the children and that she was kept in a coma for 12 months. She believes that there was a baby that was burnt by the bikies. She reported that she killed a man who raped her.
The children were recovered into the applicant’s care by a recovery order executed by Police on 9 April, 2021. Ms U said that when doing so, the police found no evidence of any maltreatment. The older two children had severe dental decay and required significant dental care.
Ms U told Dr B that the applicant had been approachable and co-operative with the department and appeared to be coping adequately. There was a visit in 2021 with the respondent but she would not meet at her home and would only meet in the park which indicated to Ms U that she was suspicious and possibly paranoid. The respondent complained to Ms U that the house two doors down had cameras that were observing her.
On the basis of the interviews he conducted and the material he examined, Dr B formed the opinion that that there was a strong, positive relationship between the children and the applicant.
He did not think that the applicant suffered from any particular mental health condition. He did not consider that there was any overt personality disorder, notwithstanding that there were significant personality vulnerabilities early in his life which led to a number of criminal charges against him.
Dr B opined that the applicant had the capability of providing well for the biological and physical needs of the children and overall, he formed the view that the applicant was a capable, caring parent.
In so far as the respondent is concerned, Dr B was of the view that the respondent was delusional. He thought that there was a major concern about her relationship with X because the respondent believed that X was an imposter and in fact is another child H and that X has disappeared. The respondent also believes that the children have all been brutally raped. As a result, Dr B held major concerns about the respondent’s relationship with the children moving forward. He thought that there was a potential that this could become very detrimental to the children if they are exposed to her ongoing delusional ideas.
Dr B formed the opinion that the respondent was suffering from a paranoid psychosis. Her condition was consistent with a paranoid delusional disorder. She held persecutory delusions relating to her children and the abuse of the children. The delusions have a bizarre nature to them as they are clearly implausible and not understandable. The examples of her delusional disorders include that she believed that Z was not the applicant’s baby and required a DNA test. She believed that various people, such as Ms W, were taking children away from her and reappearing in her life. She believed that X was an imposter. The respondent explained that she believed that she had been drugged and raped. She had expressed to the FACS worker Ms U that that she had been drugged for 12 months. She said that she had been drugged and that a line of people had raped the three children. She was able to name her other six children born of her, but did not seem to have a clear idea of their dates of birth or their whereabouts except a bizarre concept that bikies and the applicant were involved in a conspiracy.
Dr B opined that the respondent would struggle to be able to provide for the physical needs of the children. Her accommodation was uncertain and her ability to work and obtain an income was uncertain. Her attention to the children’s dental needs was an example of neglect, requiring $15,000 worth of urgent dental care for the two older children. There was concern from the department about the level of care of the children. Dr B did not believe that the respondent was able to provide for the emotional or psychological needs of the children as her psychosis was all consuming and is potentially dangerous for the children if they are also part of her delusional system.
Dr B recommended that the children remain in the applicant’s care and that they spend limited supervised time with the respondent. He recommended that the respondent undertake psychiatric treatment, including admission to a psychiatric facility and appropriate antipsychotic treatment. Thereafter, he thought a Community Treatment Order was necessary to ensure compliance with any treatment regime for long enough to be able to develop a healthy mental state where she can have some increased contact with the children. However, Dr B thought that at the time of his report, without having had adequate psychiatric treatment, it was not possible to make any clear recommendations about how often and how much contact the children should have with her, apart from maintaining some recognition contact in a supervised capacity.
There was no evidence, indeed, not even a suggestion from the respondent that she had taken up any of Dr B’s suggestions. There is no evidence that she has received any treatment at all for her mental health conditions and her delusions in particular.
CONCLUSIONS
The evidence of Dr B does not suggest that the children will benefit from a meaningful relationship with the respondent at this stage. The evidence suggests that there is a real potential for her to expose the children to her delusions which, in Dr B’s opinion, will be dangerous for them.
Moreover, it seems uncontroversial that when the children were in the respondent’s care, they suffered neglect and in particular the two older children required extensive dental work to rectify that neglect. There is a need to protect them from harm by reason of neglect in the respondent’s care.
The children have a strong relationship with the applicant and the evidence before me, such as it is, is to the effect that he has the capacity to meet the physical, emotional and intellectual needs of these children. They are apparently doing well in his care.
Whilst the respondent made numerous claims to Dr B of violence towards her and the children either by the applicant, or by persons acting on his behalf or in concert with him, there is no evidence to support any of those claims before me. Moreover, Dr B described those claims as part of the respondent’s delusional thinking.
I have no hesitation in concluding that the orders sought by the father in his further, further amended initiating application filed on 17 November, 2023 represent orders that are in the best interests of these children.
In the event that the respondent takes steps to address the issues that have been identified by Dr B she will have the opportunity to approach the court for further parenting orders should the parties not be able to agree on arrangements for the children once those steps have occurred.
I make the orders set out at the commencement of these reasons.
I certify that the preceding thirty-seven (37) numbered paragraphs are a true copy of the Reasons for Judgment of the Honourable Justice Jarrett. Associate:
Dated: 15 December 2023
0
0
0