In the course of exposing questionable practices by Oranga Tamariki in our Taken by the State series over the past four years, Newsroom Investigates has been inundated by complaints about the Family Court system.
Criticism from lawyers, victim-survivors and community leaders has illustrated the lack of a comprehensive judicial complaints system as well as issues with the treatment of witnesses in court by judges.
Last week we published a story about the in-court treatment of two social workers by a Family Court judge, with a lawyer who was present describing the style of questioning by Judge Peter Callinicos as “shocking” and “very extreme”.
The lawyer, Janet Mason, says one of the social workers was crying almost the entire time she was being deposed, without a break, and believes this kind of treatment would not be acceptable to most people. She understands one of the social workers was traumatised by the experience and has since left her job.
While no one is pleased when judges rule against them, this story is not about rulings and outcomes of cases, but about how women have been treated by legal professionals in court and their subsequent characterisation in written documents, and the effects this has had on their lives.
What we found is certain judges’ names come up more than others and trust in the system is lacking.
In Napier, there is one Family Court judge, Judge Callinicos.
Five women have told Newsroom of their experiences in the court, and they share similarities: that they were disbelieved, labelled as emotional or unreliable, and left feeling broken with little faith in the court system.
One told us about a custody hearing between her and her ex-husband. She referred to a court transcript where she says Judge Callinicos belittled her.
The judge said some of the ex-husband’s decisions had been made “in a cauldron of the mother’s bizarre and extreme behaviours.” And went on to describe the woman as “wholly unreliable” with “entrenched bitterness and vitriol” and displaying “emotional bitterness” as a witness.
In one part, the judge said the woman’s evidence “emanated not from an honest recollection of actual events, measured by what I term ‘objective reality’ but rather flowed from a perception of events that derived from her considerable emotional state.”
She said one of the most striking comments the judge made described her relationship with her children: “Her emotions are intrinsically linked with those of the children and to that extent she lacks competent parenting in an emotional context.”
In a second case brought to Newsroom, a custody and family violence hearing, Judge Callinicos found the ex-husband “to be a fair-minded, gentle and circumspect witness,” and, “most reliable.”
“Unlike the applicant and her supporting witnesses, he answered questions spontaneously and without affectation.” However, the judge found the woman so unreliable “to the point little weight could be placed upon anything they depose before the court.”
Judge Callinicos also rejected the woman’s allegations of what she describes as ‘coerced sex’ by her ex-husband, rather the judge said the evidence “supports a conclusion that the [the woman’s] actions throughout have caused confusion to [the ex-husband] as to the status of their relationship.”
“It was like a living hell,” the woman told Newsroom of her court experience. “Judge Callinicos’ verbal brutality towards me was shocking.”
The woman’s witnesses were also in the firing line, with one of them telling Newsroom she was forced by the judge to choose a date for an event that was hazy in her memory.
“I explained I did not know the exact date. He repeated, ‘You will pick a date,’ threateningly. I said I do not know, which date shall I pick? I placed my finger on the calendar. It was removed and then Judge Callinicos, with the prosecution, proceeded to tear my evidence to shreds.”
Her experience on the stand left her shattered: “As a witness I felt threatened, abused and ridiculed. All in the ‘Halls of Justice’. My faith and trust in the system is now non-existent.”
Glib, manipulative, devious
In a third case, a Family Court hearing brought by a woman’s ex-husband over a challenge to a separation of assets, Judge Callinicos interrupted and talked over the woman multiple times in her deposition, later describing the woman as inherently dishonest, glib, manipulative and devious.
“I found the respondent to be one of the least credible witnesses I have ever observed,” the judge wrote, and that her evidence was presented “in a calculated and manipulative manner to achieve her end goal of discrediting [her ex-husband]. These actions…display a person of inherently dishonest character.”
Judge Callinicos described the woman’s witnesses (one a psychologist) as, “unwitting victims of her manipulative behaviours,” who “merely repeated things told to them” by the woman.
The judge also concluded he was, “in no doubt that [the woman] was not abused by [her ex-husband].”
The woman told Newsroom she felt ashamed at the things said about her in the case and hurt at the “many untruths and the unfairness of it all.”
“It has been devastating to have my reputation attacked in court by the Crown and the judge. I was devastated by the judge’s comments.”
Two other women who have spoken to Newsroom are still mired in the court process and fear repercussions for sharing exactly what was said to them by the judge in court and in documents.
Instead, they shared the way their experiences facing Judge Callinicos in court so far have made them feel:
“He belittled me during court and I literally left crying. It was traumatic, I’ve had nightmares about it and I have to do therapy because of it.
“I now suffer severe anxiety due to it all and am on medication which I never wanted to turn to.”
Court setting retraumatising
Someone who regularly hears about in-court experiences similar to these is Deborah Mackenzie.
The co-founder of Backbone Collective, an independent charity that provides women who have experienced violence and abuse a safe way to communicate their experiences, told Newsroom she would not comment on specific judges, but says the organisation has heard from hundreds of women victim-survivors that the court setting is often re-traumatising.
“Many of these women have described an environment where they are verbally abused by judges, belittled, threatened that their children will be taken from them, accused of being hysterical, mentally unwell, over anxious or lying or exaggerating their or their children’s experiences of violence and abuse.”
She says they are also at times accused of being too educated or successful to be a victim, and that women struggle to have the judiciary believe their experiences of violence and abuse.
“There is such a poor level of understanding about family and sexual violence and how victim-survivors might present in court. Women might be extremely distressed, fearful and anxious, struggle to articulate their answers clearly, dissociate, remember things that happened at a later date, or be very persistent about their or their children’s need for protection.
“None of these behaviours mean they are not credible or have not been victims of violence and abuse, although it appears that professionals in the Family Court often wrongly interpret them in that way.”
Backbone has called for a specialist court model that uses best practice, evidence-based approaches when dealing with victim-survivors.
Complaints go nowhere
Three of the women Newsroom spoke to have made formal complaints to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner (JCC) about Judge Callinicos’ conduct towards them in court, but to no avail.
(In Aotearoa New Zealand, challenges to rulings or judgments are carried out through the court appeals process. The JCC, with the Judicial Conduct Panel Act, is meant to provide an avenue to discipline judges for misconduct.)
But there is no provision via the JCC for any formal disciplining of judges, barring the extreme action of removing a judge from office, which has never been taken.
The result is that despite thousands of complaints made about judges between 2005 and 2020, not a single judge has been formally disciplined.
One of the women who came to Newsroom provided us with this response she received from the JCC following a complaint about Judge Callinicos: “Of course, you are entitled to make a complaint to me in accordance with the Act but the reality is that my functions are limited.”
The JCC law instead seeks to “enhance public confidence in the judicial system” and “to protect the impartiality and integrity of the judicial system” through receiving complaints about the conduct of judges.
An integral aspect of judicial impartiality, as outlined in the Guidelines for Judicial Conduct 2019, is that judges maintain a standard of behaviour in court that “does not diminish the confidence of litigants, and the public in general, in the ability, integrity, impartiality and independence of the judge.”
This includes the way witnesses are treated in court: “The entitlement of everyone who comes to court…is to be treated in a way that respects their dignity. Bullying by the judge is unacceptable. Judges must conduct themselves with courtesy to all and must require similar courtesy from those appearing in court.”
None of the women we spoke to have described feeling as though their dignity was respected in the courtroom.
