Depression
F4E Yellow Pages – the free directory listing for Fathers Rights Resources
F4E are happy to announce the release of a new FREE service on our website, the F4E Fathers-Rights Yellow Pages Website Directory Listings.
F4E YP is an online website directory listing all relevant fatherhood and fathers’ rights websites and other resources that are categorised for easy navigation or search.
Find available resources for fathers on topics ranging from Fathers Rights, Me’ns Support Services, Legal Resources, Research, Mediation & Counselling, Parenting Support, Shared Parenting, Child Activities Support, Child Support, Political, Men’s Health, Men’s Charities and much much more.
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A study into the Post-Divorce Experience of Australian Men
We are conducting a study into how Australian men adapt to life after divorce in cases where children were both present and not present in the relationship when it ended.
We are looking for Australian men willing to take part, between the ages of 18 and 60 and who have experienced divorce or a common law (de-facto) relationship breakdown.
If you choose to participate, you will be required to complete three internet based questionnaires that take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.
All answers will be recorded anonymously and confidentiality of data will be maintained.
Where Good Men Don’t Count: The Dire Repercussions of Ignoring Men’s Welfare – Story Bridge Murder/Suicide
In another case reflecting the lack of support experienced by separated fathers in this country, many Australians are now questioning the wisdom of Australia’s family support services which have focussed almost exclusively on the welfare and support of women, while ignoring the needs men, resulting in a culture of vilification that has driven some men over the edge, with dire consequences for the innocent children of separated families.
IT WAS dark outside when Danielle Lees woke and reached for her mobile phone. It had only been hours since she last saw him, but something made her dial her husband to see if everything was OK.
By the time the call connected with Jason Lees’ mobile, both he and their son, Brad, were already dead.
Danielle, a psychologist, had been staying with her parents on the Gold Coast.
Neighbours say the couple appeared to have separated, but Jason, a teacher at Brisbane’s “Churchie” and a former rugby union referee, drove to meet her for lunch on Sunday.
He left again for home in the afternoon, taking Brad with him – the two-year-old attended his school’s kindergarten.
It was about 2am when Jason strapped Brad into the car, loaded his bike and drove from their Seven Hills home in suburban Brisbane to Kangaroo Point.
Family Court to consider Emotional Abuse
Editor Note: The below article appeared recently in the Daily Telegraph, but is oddly naive to the new family violence bill, which is probably only days away from being passed by the federal Senate. This bill, when it becomes law, will re-define family violence to include anything that can be subjectively alleged to have caused harm, without the need of objective proof.
This categorically includes emotional violence, but given that the standard of proof has been significantly lowered, it will also include raising of voices, slamming of phones, using profanity and swearing, delusional allegations, confused feelings, dreams, unreasonable anxiety and apprehension, the misunderstanding of language (and body language), and malicious and knowingly false allegations.
All of the above will be considered a form of family abuse, as per the family violence bill, and the family court, will no doubt, as per its robust tradition and as instructed by the federal Attorney General, Robert McClelland, ensure that the decision of who did what will follow strict gender lines, in other words, when in doubt, always blame the Male.
Ironically, the unjustified witholding of a child from the father (as in most cases), or the alienation of the child against the father, will no longer be considered a form of abuse, as per the instructions of the Gillard government who have removed penalties against Parental Alienation from the family law act, as well as removing penalties against the making of knowingly false allegations.
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The Family Court probably has no choice but to include a greater appreciation and understanding of emotional violence in its rulings, but that plainly doesn’t mean such a course will be easy.
For obvious reasons, Family Court disputes are among the most complicated dealt with by the Australian judicial system.
These cases are invariably rife with emotional complexities even before they arrive in the court, which adds yet more difficulties.
The tasks of judges in these instances are not to be envied.
And matters may be set for yet more difficulties, with moves to consider at greater length the roles of emotional abuse, intimidation and using earnings as a weapon in settling child custody disputes.
Nobody disputes that emotional abuse is an important issue and can be extraordinarily destructive in a relationship.
It is indeed possible to agree that in many cases emotional abuse may even be more harmful than physical abuse. The problem comes when such matters are brought before a court and subject to claims of proof. While physical evidence of abuse is relatively obvious and may be easily traced to a cause, emotional abuse is, by its very nature, concealed.
This makes it at once extremely damaging but also far more difficult to prove.
There are also issues of precedent that could well emerge. If it is established in one case that a certain pattern of behaviour amounted to abuse, then it is likely that subsequent trials will follow that precedent – even if a claimant’s level of trauma in response to similar behaviour is completely different.
The Family Court probably has no choice but to include a greater appreciation and understanding of emotional violence in its rulings, but that plainly doesn’t mean such a course will be easy. The court and its judges will be working even harder under these new structures than ever before.
Raise Your Voice, Lose Your Child
“He raised his voice at me, and I was frightened he was going to hurt me and the kids.”
That’s it. That’s all it takes for a man to lose his children in today’s hyper-sensitive landscape of domestic violence prevention.
This sea change can be traced to the days and months following the tragic death of Nicole Brown Simpson, when the public outcry by the domestic violence lobby moved beyond confronting actual physical altercations and began focusing on the perceived threat of violence. By casting such a wide net, centered almost entirely on male against female domestic violence, there have been unintended consequences that play themselves out in Family Court every day.
With nothing more than a woman stating, “I was frightened he might hurt us,” a court can remove a man from his home and prevent him from seeing his children for a minimum of three weeks. Often the court will also order either an anger management or a batterer’s intervention class and generally grant the demand by his ex-spouse that he have supervised visitation.
The intrusion by the courts into family dynamics has become so extreme that the domestic violence laws are no longer being used to protect potential victims, but rather to victimize potential abusers.
Let me be clear about this: in the eyes of the court, all men are considered to be potential abusers. No matter his history, if there was any provocation, or if he was in fact the abused victim. This last point is made even more interesting when considering that female-on-male domestic violence make up 50-percent of all cases, yet it is the man who is singled out as being potentially dangerous. And while as an attorney, my professional life is predicated on “innocent until proven guilty,” and “all” is a word to be carefully considered before using, I will say that due to O.J. Simpson’s horrific, inexcusable, and deadly behavior, a shadow has been cast on all men in all cases.
The courts no longer believe there is any appropriate expression of anger and, in essence, have outlawed the emotion. We have made it strategically impossible for a person to display anger in any form, whether a mental health professional would label it a “healthy expression” or not, without the line being automatically drawn to an actual act of physical violence.
But the fact is that humans have a full range of emotions. We get happy, we get sad, and yes, we get angry. And while it is absurd to think that our judicial system could legislate our happiness or sadness, it appears to gladly accept the notion that expressing anger in any fashion should have legal consequences.
In states across the country, if one parent is determined to be an “abuser”—and in California that means a raised voice—that person is no longer presumed to be a fit parent. The “victim parent” is now presumed to be a better parent and has an advantage when the court makes final determinations of child custody, visitation, and move-away plans to new cities, states, or countries.
This has created the unintended consequence of the strategic domestic violence restraining order. When one parent wants to take unfair advantage in a divorce or paternity case, all that is needed is the granting of domestic violence restraining order and the court will automatically suspend the other parent’s parental rights—usually for a short period. But to the cut-off parent, that brief time can seem like an eternity.
If the court determines that there are grounds for a permanent order, the cut-off parent may be forced to endure a 52-week batterer’s intervention course. The problem with this is that in the flimsy guidelines of what defines domestic violence these days, almost any fact pattern can be twisted to create “violence.”
For fathers who are required to have a monitor to see their children, which is becoming a more common occurrence as a requirement due to the domestic violence allegations, they may be unable to see their children. The costs of a paid monitor can quickly become prohibitive since the man will also be ordered to pay child support, often spousal support, the cost of the batterer’s intervention or anger management classes, and he has to find his own apartment since he’s been evicted from his home.
Domestic Violence Restraining Orders originally were meant to be a protective measure by the courts. But they have become a fast track process by which unscrupulous parties gain sole legal and sole physical custody of the children.
And, as is typical in “win at all cost” child custody cases, it is often the child that suffers the most. The “victim parent” strategy may yield short-term results for the accusing spouse, but the bad lessons learned by the child may last a lifetime.
Fathers who are truly guilty of domestic violence or child abuse should be viewed as criminals and treated as such. But in our rush to avoid these types of tragedies through a “zero tolerance policy,” we have gone against the most important tenet of the law: Innocent Until Proven Guilty. And the result is that we are creating and perpetuating a new type of abuse—the marginalization of fathers.
JULY 20, 2011 BY DAVID PISARRA
Fathers4Equality would like to encourage you to forward this excellent article to the following paternal-Abuse deniers.
Email: Tony.Windsor.MP@aph.gov.au
Email: senator.bob.brown@aph.gov.au
Email: R.McClelland.MP@aph.gov.au
Email: Kate.Ellis.MP@aph.gov.au
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Discover ways of managing family discipline through authority books and management books
Submissions to Family Law Amendment (Family Violence) Bill 2010 Exposure Draft released under FOI
Subject: Submissions by organisations to Family Law Amendment (Family Violence) Bill 2010 Exposure Draft released under FOI
Dear colleagues,
Under a Freedom of Information Act request, the Federal Attorney General’s Department has finally released the following information to the public:
1. Copies of all public submissions lodged by organisations in response to the public consultation process into the Family Law Amendment (Family Violence) Bill 2010 – Exposure Draft . 122 submissions by organisations supported the proposed amendments; 15 submissions did not support the proposed amendments; and 6 submissions did not indicate whether they supported or did not support the proposed amendments.
2. A tally of the number of submissions by personal individuals that supported the proposed amendments (178); the number of submissions that did not support the proposed amendments (52); and the number of submissions that did not indicate whether they supported or did not support the amendments (36); for all submissions lodged in response to the public consultation process into the Family Law Amendment (Family Violence) Bill 2010 – Exposure Draft.
It is sad that in a democracy such as Australia, we have to rely on Freedom of Information legislation to obtain access to public submissions to a public federal government inquiry, especially when the inquiry’s website clearly states, “unless submissions are marked confidential they may be published.” There is no doubt that the Labor Government is pushing through their Family Law reforms with as little transparency as possible.
When the Attorney General’s Department was originally contacted in February 2011 we were told they “didn’t know if or when the submissions would be published.” When pressed further, we were told they “might be published when the legislation goes through parliament.” This clearly hasn’t happened. The FOI request was made on 18th February 2011, and the documents were finally received on 3rd June 2011 (FOI legislation requires that information be provided within one month, or two months when sensitive information is involved). It has taken a further month to scan them and put them online.
You can read the submissions using the links below. They were sent to us by the Attorney General’s Department in the exact format that you see online. They have been scanned and OCR’d “as-is” into one large PDF document that can be easily searched using Acrobat Reader software. For those of you who might have trouble downloading large documents, the large PDF has also been split into 5 smaller sections.
I have also discovered that a submission lodged on 14th January via email from the One in Three Campaign was not provided under the FOI request. This raises some very serious questions indeed:
1. How many other submissions were sent in to this Inquiry but were not received, and therefore were unable to be considered by the government?
2. How many other submissions were indeed received by this inquiry but were not provided under the FOI request?
Either way, there appear to be serious administrative errors taking place in the Attorney General’s Department. If your organisation’s submission is also not included in the PDFs linked below, could you please let me know as a matter of urgency?
Download links: Full document (142MB) or Part 1 (33.8MB) | Part 2 (16.5MB) | Part 3 (22.9MB) | Part 4 (35.2MB) | Part 5 (34MB)
Kind regards,
Greg Andresen
Research & Media Liaison Men’s Health Australia
Website http://www.menshealthaustralia.net
Post P.O. Box 1292, Bondi Junction NSW 1355, Australia
‘Suicide’ takes another Separated Father
A SUDDEN fall from stardom and a messy break-up have been blamed for the suicide death of former Australian Idol judge Jay Dee Springbett.
The Sony starmaker – who helped shape the careers of pop stars from Human Nature to Jessica Mauboy – was found in his Sydney apartment.
Police say there were no suspicious circumstances and looked to be a suicide.
Two years after hitting the big time on Australian Idol, Springbett was dealing with the flipside to fame: a career switch and the breakdown of his once happy family.
Police were called to his Woolloomooloo flat after he was reported missing by workmates. He was found slumped on a sofa, with stubbies of beer and prescription drugs nearby, the obvious hallmarks of a suicide attempt.
As tributes poured in yesterday, a Jekyll-and-Hyde picture of Springbett emerged. A doting father to daughters Jasmin and Marley, he was pained by the split from their mother, publicist Louisa McCole.
Renowned for his party-boy ways and linked to many of the female performers he signed for Sony, Springbett had fought to shut down the rumours blamed for ending his relationship.
Despite his marital woes, he thrived in the role of dad, telling friends: “My babies are the best thing I’ve ever done.”
When his union with McCole finally broke down earlier this year, he maintained contact with his daughters but “missed them desperately”.
McCole used her Facebook page to acknowledge condolences yesterday. “Thank you to everyone for their love and support. Simply heartbroken,” she wrote.
It is believed she was alarmed at Springbett’s moods and behaviour in recent weeks.
When he joined a recreational gun club, friends also became worried.
His Sony “family” also had its challenges, with Springbett in the process of moving from full-time employment to an external label and artist management deal.
Boss Denis Handlin said Springbett was “in great form” at an executive meeting on Monday.
Celebrating his birthday, Springbett was excited about a new single he had secured from acclaimed songwriter Diane Warren for Mauboy to record.
“He also found a great song for Nat Bass to do during the X Factor season coming up,” Mr Handlin said. “He was in really great form.”
Kyle Sandilands, who was replaced by Springbett on Idol, said he saw his industry mate at a restaurant on Wednesday.
Mr Handlin hopes to organise a benefit to raise funds for Springbett’s two young daughters.
“He adored them,” he said.
Related: The Gillard government will soon make it much more difficult for separated fathers to see their children, implementing a presumption of guilt in child abuse against all separated fathers, regardless of whether child abuse ever occurred or not. Read more on Gillard’s attack on children from separated families here.
Anyone with personal problems or considering suicide can call Lifeline on 131 114 on Dads in Distress on 1300 853 437.
Better Access to Mental Health Care for Separated Fathers
If you are a separated father and are finding it difficult to cope with the stress of marriage break-up, you are not alone.
Most men experience extreme feelings of dejection and hopelessness as a result of separation and divorce, and often this is made all the more difficult when we try to deal with our emotions on our own.
If you are a man in the midst of separation, you owe it to yourself and to your kids to get the support you need and deserve, to help you through this difficult time.
Thankfully, many free services are available to men, and it is often just a matter of visiting your GP to get the ball rolling.
Do not try to live up to some unrealistic standard. We all fall upon hard times. There is no shame in seeking help during separation. If you cannot do it for yourself, then please do it for your children.
What is the Better Access to Mental Health Care program?
On 1 November 2006, the Howard Government introduced the Better Access to psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs through the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Program.
Free counselling and other rebates are available for consultations with psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists.
To qualify for rebates under the Better Access program, a person with depression, anxiety or other mental disorder first needs to get a referral from a General Practitioner (GP), psychiatrist or paediatrician.
Download the following PDF for more information on how to access these health services.
Depressed? Need help? Go to: http://www.beyondblue.org.au
Girl over the Bridge – Sole Custody laws take another life
MAD or bad? The appearance of Arthur Freeman at his murder trial supported either theory.
His locks, streaked blond, tumbled over the collar of the black suit he wore each day. Strands of hair, as though reaching for the sun, on his otherwise bare crown suggested a close relationship with a power plug.
His forehead looked to be carved with a hammer and chisel. As Freeman shuffled in each morning, shackles clanking, shoulders hunched, his body resembled a block of concrete, wide and thick. He would be likened to cartoon characters, mad monks and sci-fi aliens.
Sometimes, Freeman bared his teeth in expressions of pain. He whimpered and wept and guzzled water during evidence about the autopsy of his daughter, Darcey Freeman, the four-year-old he threw off the West Gate Bridge.
Mostly, he stared with wide eyes, like a zoo exhibit who could not grasp how he’d arrived where he was.
For 35 years, until January 29, 2009, “Ardie” was considered “harmless”. He was an IT geek who had shone as a database administrator in London. He played tennis weekly. He kept busy, with bike rides and tinkering, as he always had as a boy. There were beers and skiing trips in a life led, from school onwards, under the radar. Ordinariness was his thing.
More than anything else, it seems, he wanted more time with his three kids who – for a stretch – he had cared for full-time. He played beach soccer with them. He would take his daughter to ballet. Darcey would seek him out for hugs.
Then Freeman tossed her off a city landmark – as though posting a letter, according to one of many witnesses. No single act of recent times has haunted us like the “West Gate Bridge girl”.
No one could quite explain how this happened, not then, and not during his trial of the past few weeks. Not even the killer himself who, it was said, had no memory of the incident and who now, to keep busy, tends tomatoes in his prison garden. Apparently, the tomatoes are doing well.
Freeman’s trial has served to apportion blame. Yet in pleading not guilty – “mad, not bad” as his lawyer called it – Freeman’s case was doomed to skirt elements of context that may have helped explain the inexplicable.
A trial showdown of medical experts would throw up terms like “dissociative state” and “insane automatism”. The jargon did much to bamboozle a lay audience who, nevertheless, were jolted anew each day with the realisation that a little girl who sang and danced wasn’t coming back.
Much weight was placed on a custody dispute settled the day before Darcey’s death, a resolution Freeman had planned to mark with friends on the following night.
Instead, that night, he would be trembling and dribbling, pasted in snot and curled in the fetal position, on a police cell floor. Even his parents couldn’t coax a word from him.
Freeman was there but he wasn’t there at all.
The court-room theatrics did not settle questions that may never properly be answered.
Why did Freeman, described by a close relative as “too nice a dad”, damn his little girl at one of the busiest places in Melbourne?
How could he visit such terror upon someone so dear and so trusting? Was Arthur Freeman mad, or bad, or sad – or all of the above?
T he confusing dynamics for Freeman’s trial were set from the first day. Freeman’s defence admitted he had committed a “horror”, but argued he wasn’t culpable for it.
His plea committed a dozen or more ordinary people, who might otherwise have strived to forget their unwitting proximity to the tragedy, to brave the creaky stairs of the witness box.
The crux of the trial itself – was Freeman mentally impaired, or did his daughter die from his “conscious”, “deliberate” and “voluntary” act? – was almost beside the point.
Throughout, at least for those witnesses who had spoken with Freeman before the event, the process felt spooked with unspoken “what-ifs” that may have spared a little girl who looked a lot like the dad who killed her.
What if Freeman’s father had driven the three children the day before, as originally planned?
What if he had convinced Freeman, as he tried, to allow him to accompany them that hot morning?
What if any of the five adults Freeman spoke to in the hours before Darcey’s death had said something to avert such a tragic course?
None of these people were to blame, of course. This was not their fault. No one, except perhaps Freeman, had any inkling of the doom ahead.
Even now, two years later, few of those acquainted with Freeman – especially his own family – appear to have shed the shock.
The numbness may also apply to the wider community. Media junkies can acquire a thirst for unthinkable atrocities, such as gangland executions. A law of the jungle framework cushions such fascination. Such things don’t happen to us – they happen to them.
Yet the tale of Darcey Freeman’s doom slipped through the usual filters of distance. Many people say they don’t want to understand. Yet the face of the girl – two weeks shy of five, on her way to her first day of school and one of life’s first big adventures – pops up in the thoughts of thousands of bridge commuters each day.
Even Justice Paul Coghlan, a man known to keep his reserve, extended touching kindnesses to trial witnesses. “Don’t blame yourself,” he told one female witness.
Freeman’s own father, after finishing his evidence, looked to the judge.
“You know, I’ve lost my grand-daughter,” he said.
“I’m a grandfather, too,” Justice Coghlan replied. “I understand.”
Such glimpses of humanity, as well as tears and gulps, leavened evidence that would repeatedly bathe Supreme Court room 11 in despair.
As Freeman stared at nothing in particular, his ex-father-in-law, Wayne Barnes, an old-school ex-cop, glared and grimaced and glowered at him. Barnes often looked set to vault the rail that separated them.
Freeman himself, at times, appeared overwhelmed. He pulled faces that contrasted with the composure of his ex-wife in the witness box, giving evidence about an ex-husband who doomed her daughter to a life unled.
Freeman’s mouth gaped, as though he was unaware of the movement, when his older son’s video testimony of the event was aired.
The son’s legs kicked back and forth during the interview. He plainly could not grasp, at the time aged six, the gravity of “Little Darce’s” loss. The poor kid has the rest of his life for that.
Freeman’s eyes would take on red rims. During an inventory of Darcey’s injuries to the brain, heart, spleen, to the blood in her ears and nose, he scrubbed at his face with a hanky.
“He’s about to start howling at the ceiling,” one observer whispered. It’s said Freeman was at times reluctant to appear in court. Apparently, he stripped in the prison van en route one morning. One night, he was thought to refuse to leave his holding cell.
Yet the jury would never hear the words that may have softened Freeman’s de facto standing as a monster. They would not hear him say he was sorry.
The jury members filed in each morning to present as a panorama in grimness. They had been instructed to do the impossible, to get inside the head of an “excessively caring” father who fretted, in his absence, that no one would read his children bed-time stories.
A father who wanted to be a “huge part” of his children’s lives.
A father who killed his daughter for reasons that will never make sense and, in doing so, threatened to condemn all three of the fragile souls he helped bring into the world.
Freeman’s murder trial could never double as an examination of logic. There’s something in particular, too, it did not resolve. Was one death supposed to be three?
Freeman used plurals in phone threats to his ex-wife minutes before Darcey’s death. “Say goodbye to your children,” he said. “You will never see them again.”
Darcey’s older brother offered the only testimony of events in Freeman’s Toyota Landcruiser, driving from Airey’s Inlet to Melbourne that morning.
The two older children played games in the back seats. There were books and crayons. The two-year-old son drank from a bottle.
When the 4WD hit the West Gate Bridge, “we stopped”. Freeman asked “Darce” to climb into the front seat. Freeman, according to his son, said “please”. Then, “everything happened”.
Freeman had been on the phone to his sister during the trip. He made no reference to ghastly thoughts. He instead fretted about the kids’ lunches.
He also spoke to Elizabeth Lam, noted in court documents as a romantic interest living in London, but named as a “friend” in the court room.
He told her, she said in teary evidence in the witness box, that he felt his children had been taken away from him.
Freeman cried during the call. He felt “helpless”. He was preoccupied, it seems, with a custody settlement from the day before.
It seems reasonable to suggest the custody issues had consumed him for many months beforehand.
In November, 2008, according to a close relative, Freeman said his ex-wife would “regret it” if he lost custody. “That comment has gone through my head over and over,” the relative told the Herald Sun this week. “I am not sure then if he intended to do what he has done, but it did suggest that he would make her life hell.”
This tallies with comments, again offered on condition of anonymity, from the mother’s side of the family. Freeman was described as “calculating” and easy to underestimate. Further, he was a “control freak” who lost control after the marriage breakdown.
Freeman feared, rightly, that the shared care arrangements between the divorced parents – three days’ custody alternated with exchanges at Kew McDonald’s – would be altered. Freeman would now have custody one weekend a fortnight, with a few hours on alternate Thursday nights.
When he left the Family Court, he “appeared happy”, according to his ex-wife. It’s worth noting the decision was a negotiated settlement.
Yet the next morning, on the phone, Freeman told Lam there had been “lots of angry women in the courts who weren’t very supportive of fathers”.
Even then, perhaps 45 minutes before Darcey’s plunge, he offered no warning of the horror ahead. Freeman spoke about pursuing greater custody through the courts.
Her phone battery went dead, but Lam didn’t phone back. She assumed Freeman’s crying would help him reconcile his feelings to the reality of his situation.
“It didn’t even enter my head that he would harm anybody,” she said.
Freeman’s distress at the custody outcome was also described by his father, Peter, in court.
Freeman had returned to his parents’ home, where the kids had stayed, about midnight the night before. He was “in a bit of a trance”. Communication was difficult, but Freeman did express great dissatisfaction with a psychologist’s assessment that figured in the custody resolution.
Peter Freeman said his son believed he had been “sort of ambushed in the report and that the report was not unbiased”.
He was cut short several times giving evidence, even by his son’s defence counsel. Mr Freeman wanted to read from notes. At one point, it appeared he wanted to query the approach of the psychologist in question, as he, his wife and Freeman’s sister had done in their police statements.
Her name is Jennifer Neoh. Her assessment of Arthur Freeman, based on interviews held three weeks before Darcey’s death, was summarised in the trial. Freeman “tended to be irrational and contradictory and demonstrated . . . passive/aggressive traits and seemed to cause chaos around him”.
His behaviour on the interview day, firstly turning up late then reappearing before the scheduled appointment itself, distressed the children, Ms Neoh said in court. He hugged and soothed one of his upset children, she said. Yet he seemed oblivious to the chaos he created.
Freeman disagreed with the report. He thought the assessment unfair. Yet until a few minutes before he threw his daughter off a bridge, he indicated only that he would pursue legitimate channels of review.
The day before Darcey’s death, after the Family Court resolution, Freeman told a friend he planned to undertake a “personal development course” to counter the psychologist’s conclusions and fight for more time with his children.
Yet it seems apparent that Freeman’s mental health, from a layman’s perspective anyway, had been patchy since his marriage break-up to Peta Barnes in 2007, perhaps even before.
Barnes, in court, said her then husband had had mood swings and anger management issues. The mood swings were also described by another family member, who alluded to Freeman’s tendency to drive “erratically” when upset.
Ms Barnes’ police statement, taken two days after Darcey’s death, went further. She thought, in retrospect, Freeman may have been suffering some form of depression.
The pair had married on millennium eve, in Perth, and then lived in Maida Vale, a nicer part of London, for more than six years.
This pairing, at first anyway, had seemed like a healthy match. He was an introvert. She was an extrovert said to drive him to do things he may not otherwise have done.
Yet on coming to Melbourne to live, Freeman, Ms Barnes said, showed he was rigid, inflexible, and struggled with change.
When she left him in March, 2007, she spoke to a Hawthorn GP about her fears.
There followed an ugly incident. The pair had talked. As Barnes stood to leave, according to her, Freeman grabbed their baby son. She feared he would throw the baby into a fireplace. She bit him. Her mother slammed a metal stroller on his back. The police were called.
The pair divorced in June, 2008, but Freeman kept wearing his wedding ring. A few months later, he went to England for three months to sort out UK residency issues. He stayed with friends who said in a police statement that he appeared “clearly depressed”, “paranoid” and “obsessive”.
It seems, from several unnamed sources, that Freeman feared his ex-wife would return to live in Perth – with the children. He believed renovations were underway to allow that to happen.
He was also unhappy with the financial split. He fretted he would not have enough money to house the children. Freeman was said to have been frustrated when his then wife, soon after the separation, was said to have suddenly transferred more than $300,000 out of a joint account.
There is little doubt, rationally or not, that Freeman felt bullied and threatened.
“I’d say she was the dominant figure,” a family member says.
“Money didn’t mean that much to him. It wasn’t a big agenda at all.”
In London, contact calls with his children got muddled. Freeman felt his ex-wife was sabotaging the contact. He was thrown by suggestions that being overseas while custody issues were in dispute could hinder his access claims.
When the friends’ three-year-old daughter played up during a museum outing, Freeman restrained the girl, prompting his friend to describe it as “over-reaction”. The friend noted that Freeman was shaking.
Freeman also spent time in London with Elizabeth Lam. He helped care for her children. The pair discussed his marriage breakdown. Freeman was “very bitter” about his wife’s “behaviour towards him”.
Was Freeman unraveling at this time, a few months before Darcey’s death? Other accounts add strength to the theory.
His father, Peter Freeman, in agreeing in court that his son’s mental health had suffered “severe deterioration” since 2007, felt Freeman had become paranoid. At times, he appeared confused, anxious and teary although Peter Freeman described an improvement that quashed any notion of advising his son to seek professional help.
Yet a strange disconnect had emerged. Freeman would be obsessive about collecting receipts concerning the children. He had developed systems for feeding and dishes. Yet his Hawthorn flat was a mess of clothes and toys.
Freeman, according to a close source, had fashioned the children’s beds and drawers, apparently to save money for the custody case. He had gathered washing machines to scavenge parts. He tinkered often, as though embracing a distraction from reality. His parents were always trying to tidy the flat’s spills of clutter.
Such disorder was what police and journalists discovered in the hours after Darcey’s death. A hand-written note was stuck to Freeman’s television. It’s not plain who wrote it. If it was Freeman, he referred to himself in the third person.
The note spoke of “keeping a clear head” and having a “big fight on your hands”.
Popular opinion dictates that any parent who kills their child is insane. Such definitions are more technical in courts of law. Actions that qualify for everyday labels, such as “brainsnaps” or “meltdowns”, must meet specific psychiatric guidelines to legally classify as “mental impairment”.
Freeman’s murder trial heard references to the M’Naghten trial, which in 1843 codified a presumption of sanity unless the defence could prove otherwise, and “Falconer”, a 1990 case when a woman’s conviction for killing her husband was put aside after some psychiatric evidence was disallowed in her original case.
Freeman’s lawyer, David Brustman, SC, argued his client could not distinguish between right and wrong when he killed Darcey. He was mentally ill at the time.
Freeman had no psychiatric history (or criminal record) before Darcey’s death. Only one of six psychiatrists to interview Freeman agreed with Mr Brustman’s assertions.
Professor Graham Burrows likened Freeman’s state to that of a sleep walker on the morning of Darcey’s death.
He was at the severe end of dissociation – “He really didn’t know what was going on”.
Consultant psychiatrist Yvonne Skinner’s finding was more sinister. She has handled more than 80 cases of parents who kill their children. She concluded that Freeman’s actions fitted what is known as “spousal revenge”.
This theory dictates that the child itself is not the cause of violent rage, but instead a weapon of retribution. Such conclusions serve to reduce the reasons for Darcey’s killing to something akin to collateral damage.
They also reflect the recent conviction of Robert Farquharson, for the second time, whose three sons drowned when he drove into a dam on Father’s Day in 2005.
Yet it doesn’t explain why Freeman chose Darcey, as the first or only victim, instead of one of his two sons. The older son reported no acrimony during the car trip.
One hint, which may or may not be important, may lie in Dr Neoh’s report.
She specifically mentioned that Darcey was close to her mother in Freeman’s absence, and that her “educational and social needs” were important factors in the custody resolution.
Five of the six experts agreed that Freeman was probably anxious and stressed during the drive, but not to degrees that constitute a “disease of the mind”.
He was running late for Darcey’s school drop-off. Lunches hadn’t been made, her school shoes were too big, and some of her school uniform was back at Freeman’s flat.
The build up of tension invites comparisons with the mental unwiring of Michael Douglas’ character in 1993′s Falling Down. Freeman told one doctor he recalled feeling trapped on the bridge. He felt enormous failure that he would not get to St Joseph’s Primary School, in Hawthorn, on time.
He told another doctor he had no recollection of speaking with his ex-wife, but felt it plausible that she may have called and “berated me for not being there (at school)”.
Professor Burrows said Freeman had been “tipped” by the psychologist’s report prepared for the custody hearing.
Professor Skinner said Freeman told her he had been “stunned” by the report, which he described as “scathing”.
Yet she argued his ability to drive a car and make phone calls showed he acting consciously and voluntarily.
The prosecution emphasised that he turned on the 4WD’s hazard lights, as evidence for presence of mind, when he pulled over on the bridge.
“The sequence of his behaviour demonstrates an awareness of his immediate environment and of a purposeful execution of behaviour . . .” said Dr Douglas Bell.
Freeman wouldn’t be the first father to be devastated by a Family Court decision.
Some men feel stripped of their wallets and dignity. Some grow depressed and outraged. Some have been driven by vengeance to unspeakable acts.
A Family Court judge was once shot dead in NSW. Others have been threatened. Fathers have taken their own lives.
Only one upset father has tossed his daughter from a bridge soon after a Family Court hearing.
The least contentious medical point of view, perhaps, was contained in a report by Dr Lester Walton. “Precisely what Mr Freeman may have been thinking or feeling at the material time remains unknown,” he said.
The expert arguments left little scope for popular perceptions. Freeman’s motives were either hopelessly deranged – or entirely evil. The jury went with the latter
Freeman was considered different from his first day at Newcomb High School in Geelong. No other boy in his year was called Arthur. Tormentors, always alert to a point of difference, exploited the weakness.
Paul Hogan had created a television character who sported zinc cream, a pot belly and an Esky. Freeman’s label may have been inspired by Hogan’s Arthur Donger. Another theory goes that Freeman used to smell.
Throughout school, he was called Ardie Dunger. Or Ardie Monster.
The mockery was not here or there. It was every day. Freeman spent six years at high school being terrorised. Bar the odd exception, he did not fight back.
When he did, people noticed, prompting the thought – and this from a close friend – that there was a “ticking time bomb” inside the kid who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, express himself.
“Part of me wonders whether he had mild Asperger’s (Syndrome) or something. He had a deep lack of any emotional intelligence . . . I never can recall him saying, ‘I understand how you feel’ or anything that would suggest or intimate that he did.
“Maybe if he had seen someone at that age maybe they could have diagnosed him with it.”
Some kids were thrown in bins at Newcomb High School. Some had their jumpers pulled over their heads and got slapped around. Even Ben Graham, the year’s closest thing to a future rock star, was held down in about year 8 and zapped with stove ignitor switches.
Freeman was bullied in other ways. He was told to stand on a rock in the playground. He would be ordered to stand there indefinitely. When he went to move away, he would be reminded to stay where he was. And he would obey, sometimes for 20 minutes or more.
Peter Freeman, a father of four, was a teacher at another school.
There were many troublemakers at school, the sort who fashion ninja stars in metalwork to throw at fellow students. As one student observes, such bullies could scent weakness.
“You know what kids are like,” he says. “They find the odd thing about anyone and they run with it. He copped it for his name, his look, and the way he acted.”
School year books portray a Newcomb High fraternity that celebrated sporting and science successes, with satire and without pretence. Of 88 students in Freeman’s year, 22 went to university.
Biology did not present Ben Graham, the budding Geelong footballer, with the gift of height until year 9. Graham and Freeman would go to the same university, connected by a mutually close friend, yet their diverging paths speak to life’s unknowable squiggles. Less than a week after Freeman threw his daughter from a bridge, Graham played in an NFL Superbowl.
There’s something more that may place Freeman’s childhood in the equation. It’s only rumour, but it draws a faint arc in grasping the incomprehensible.
It’s believed Freeman himself, since he killed his daughter, has traced adult issues to a childhood that included a spell at a primary school for kids with behavioural problems.
Part of his problem, perhaps – and this is from a close friend – was that Freeman had “zero people skills”. Freeman mumbled when he spoke, which wasn’t often. No one can recall any flirtations with girls who would not risk “reputational damage” by consorting with him.
It is suggested that later, when others had trekked paths of romantic exploration, Freeman remained unrounded in matters of emotional attachment.
When boys clustered in groups, Freeman would lurk at the edges of this or that gathering, never offering conversation that would open entry to a group. He was there, but he wasn’t.
He played football for a time and did weights.
Freeman would go on the annual school bike rides to Albury or elsewhere. Among a “power group” of boys, they would surge ahead on 100km day rides to arrive at their destination well before the pack.
He would “have a go at anything” says one peer, a trait later attributed to Darcey, who tried tennis and football.
Acceptance wouldn’t be found until university, when Freeman discovered alcohol and found two friends who, 15 years later, would be compelled to testify against him.
Freeman tinkered with Ford escorts, to prepare them for Autocross racing. His first car was a yellow Escort, many of its panels dinted and repaired. He would stay up until 5am on PlayStation, nap, then head to work at 8am. Later, when he met his future wife, Ardie would start to be instead called Artie.
By the time Freeman had qualified with a computer science honours degree, he had lost his hair at the crown of his head. He wore it then as he has at his murder trial – hanging long, looking weird. While married, his hair was short and neat. Visiting relatives were shocked to see his peculiar new hairstyle just before the trial began in early March.
Called “Feelings”, Freeman described fear as “when you’re in a maze with a tiger behind you”.
You run for your life
Then the tiger jumps you
The poem’s second stanza took on Dr Seuss cadences. The last four lines would acquire a weird prescience after Darcey’s death.
A forensic psychologist, on recently reading the poem, wrongly assumed that Freeman had been raised from a broken home.
It was written by a boy who later, as a man and a father, is said to have tried to write letters to his sons from jail.
But here comes your dad
So now you’re gald [glad] that you have a dad
Then he goes so you’re angry and mad
But you still love your dad
It may be tempting for his former school peers to write off Freeman as an aberration of nature. Almost every one appears to have done so. His single act defines him.
It hardly matters whether a court of law found Freeman insane or not. He didn’t just condemn his daughter and ex-wife. His own family is burdened with a grief – and stigma – that may not fade. The Freemans didn’t lose one family member. They lost as many as four.
One school peer, whose impressions were supported by others, spoke at great length to the Herald Sun. He was in Freeman’s grades several times, and liked him well enough to request a Facebook friendship years later, a few months before Darcey (the offer wasn’t taken up).
“He was like a Martin Bryant type,” the peer says.
“That look. He’d get that stare. Bloody Oath, it was scary. It was when he got bullied a bit and had had too much. But at the end of the day he was a likeable sort of fellow. They picked on him because he was harmless. But everyone knew he had that ability, that something inside him that could explode at any time.’
Newcomb High alumni hit Facebook to describe their shock and disgust at Freeman. One Facebook site sought members who wanted Freeman killed.
Yet for those who knew Freeman, Darcey’s death presented a conundrum. A close acquaintance wrote of twisted loyalties.
“I’m torn with my feelings,” she wrote. “One part of me is angry and wants justice for Darcey and another part of me feels for Ardy who is a friend in need. The conflicting feelings are like a storm churning inside. Which should rate, my head or my heart? The more I hear, the more confused I get.”
Two years later, Freeman’s high school peer keeps calling Darcey’s death an “accident”, and keeps correcting himself. Finally, he settles on “incident”.
He is sitting in a Geelong pub, nursing a beer. Rock music plays. Punters study the form for the next at Sale.
His mind veers off, to a cloudless morning and a metal railing where traffic has jammed and the city below, forever grey, is about to shimmer in a blast of heat and incomprehension.
Darcey’s final glimpses of life. Her panic? Her confusion? Such reflections mash the hardest heart. He has linked Freeman’s deed to his own children. He wants to shake and cry.
“This c—,’ he says, “threw his kid over the West Gate Bridge. “And for what?”
Freeman’s closer friend, too, pondered death penalties when, a few hours after Darcey fell 58m, he heard a radio report as he drove over the bridge.
Like all close observers, he feels a jolt of fresh shock each day, as though she died just this morning. Like all close observers, he anguishes over a simple question – what if?
For him, the question goes: What if their friendship had been rekindled?
This friend has also wondered whether he should visit Freeman in prison. He is uncertain if he would ask about Darcey’s death. Sometimes he wants to understand; other times, he does not.
Such curiosity may be moot. As far as the Herald Sun knows, Freeman talks tomatoes, but does not talk about his daughter’s death.
The old friend still cannot absorb Freeman’s deed. No one can, especially those at Freeman’s murder trial who concluded that the more they knew, the more they didn’t know at all.
Yet the friend is a man of faith. He believes that where there is justice, and justice must be served, there must also be mercy.
CV OF AN EVIL DAD
Education: Reluctant to go to school. A spell at a primary school for kids with behavioural problems, then Newcomb High School in Geelong
Nicknames: Ardie Dunger or Ardie Monster
School years: Fellow students say he was bullied, including being forced to stand on a rock without moving. He was often silent when spoken to. He would lurk on the edges of groups
Appearance: Fresh-faced with ginger facial hair that sprouted a year or two before other boys’
University: Computer science honors degree. Discovered alcohol
Sport: Played football for a time and did weights
Girls: No one can recall any flirtations with girls at school
Career: IT programmer
Marriage: Broke up with wife Peta Barnes in 2007
What his friends said about Arthur Freeman: “He was like a Martin Bryant type,” one peer said. “He’d get that stare. Bloody oath, it was scary. It was when he got bullied a bit But at the end of the day, he was a likeable sort of fellow”
ONLY QUESTIONS LEFT…
Now we’ve only got “what ifs”:
What if Freeman’s father had driven the three children the day before, as originally planned?
What if Freeman’s father had persuaded Freeman to allow him to accompany them that morning?
What if any of the five adults Freeman spoke to in the hours before Darcey’s death had said something that stopped him?
But – of course – “what ifs” can’t help.
THE FACE WE CAN’T FORGET
We remember her every time we drive across the West Gate Bridge. She’s the little girl who – on the day she was to start school – was thrown 58m to her death by her father.
But what was little Darcey like?
She was two weeks shy of her fifth birthday.
Darcey liked ballet and would often break into song and dance.
Her older brother called her “little Darce”.
She sought out her dad Arthur Freeman for hugs.
Her dad said “please” when he asked her to move into the front seat as he stopped the car that day on the bridge.
Then she was gone. And none of us could help asking the question “why” whenever we thought of her.
MAD OR BAD?
The jury in Arthur Freeman’s murder trial was given a simple choice: Was he mad or bad?
Freeman pleaded not guilty to murder on the ground of mental impairment.
According to the prosecution, his act of throwing his daughter off the West Gate Bridge was a conscious, voluntary and deliberate act after a failed custody dispute with his ex-wife.
According to the defence, Freeman was suffering a major depressive disorder and was in a “dissociative state” – like that of a sleep walker – and was unaware of his actions.
The defence called one expert witness – Professor Graham Burrows – to back the mental impairment claim.
WHAT THEY SAID
Darcey Freeman’s mum Peta Barnes
“I managed to get through one more time and I said to him, ‘It’s me.’
He said, ‘You’ll never see your children again’.”
Bridge eyewitness Barry Nelson
“It was just like it was an everyday event, like he may have been posting a letter and was walking back from the post box to his vehicle.”
Freeman’s UK-based friend Elizabeth Lam
“During the mediation he found that the women who were dealing with the family were not supportive. He said there were a lot of angry women in the courts … who weren’t very supportive of fathers.”
Arthur Freeman’s father, Peter Freeman
“It was a very strange thing that was happening … He was starting to collect hard rubbish and he would collect every receipt. He had a box full of them in the kitchen. Every receipt relating to the children.”
WHAT THE PSYCHIATRISTS SAID
DR DOUGLAS BELL:
“There is no basis in my view for concluding he was in a profound state of dissociation that in any way remotely speaks to the question or infers that he was not engaged in purposeful, willed or voluntary behaviour.”
DR YVONNE SKINNER:
“There is no evidence to suggest that Mr Freeman was incapable of forming intentions…His daughter Darcey reportedly presented some challenges in the management of her behaviour. Her educational and social needs were given as an important reason for the Family Court decision on changes to residential arrangements.”
DR LESTER WALTON:
“It’s possible that he was diagnosably mentally disturbed prior to the killing (but) the available evidence would tend to suggest he was not severely mentally disturbed…Precisely what Mr Freeman may have been thinking or feeling at the material time remains unknown.”
PROF PAUL MULLEN
“In my opinion, although Mr Freeman was certainly almost mentally disordered at the time he killed his daughter, there is insufficient information to draw any conclusions of relevance to the question of whether at that time he was incapable of knowing either the nature or wrongfulness of his actions.”
DR KATE ROBERTS:
“Nil psychotic noted.”
PROF GRAHAM BURROWS:
“What we’re talking about here is a man who in fact moved not just from the usual dissociation that you can see in major depressive disorders, but severe end of dissociation where, in fact, he didn’t really know what was going on.”
Why depression is no joke when it comes to Aussie men’s health
DEPRESSION cuts more years off the lives of Australian men than liver disease and colon cancer.
The findings come as experts continue calls for males to ditch their “blokey” attitude towards mental health issues.
SANE Australia executive director Barbara Hocking said depression was a silent epidemic among many men who still believed discussing the difficult topic was a sign of weakness.
“There’s a general understanding that women experience it (depression); there’s much less awareness that men do,” she said.
“Part of that . . . is that men are much less likely to seek help for depression; there needs to be a lot more work in changing blokey attitudes.
“The important thing to understand with this silent epidemic is that getting treatment does help and the risk people run by not seeking help is enormous.”
An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report looked at the chronic diseases that caused people to die before the age of 75. It calculates how many years of potential life these people lost.
Coronary heart disease topped the list for men, then lung cancer and depression. For women, breast cancer, lung cancer and coronary heart were deemed to be the leading causes of potential years of life lost because of chronic disease.
Depression was in eighth place.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare senior data analyst Karen Bishop said figures on depression included people who had died as a result of suicide and it is the first time such information on chronic diseases has been compiled.
The report found chronic disease killed more than 25,000 Australians during 2007 and that three out of five of these deaths were potentially avoidable.
Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance chairman Greg Johnson said the toll was especially high among disadvantaged Australians and called on the Government to reverse this toll.
For support and information about depression contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or SANE helpline on 1800 187 263.
By Callie Watson
