Based on: The Age, September 11, 2026, "'Not accountable to anybody': Commissioner slams Family Court judges over attitudes to women" by Wendy Tuohy (paywalled); ABC News and the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission's Yearly Report to Parliament 2026 (both public); and FCAN's public Facebook post responding to the same story.

This week, it wasn't a journalist or an advocate raising the alarm. It was Australia's own Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner.

Micaela Cronin tabled her third Yearly Report to Parliament this week, and named the family law and justice system as one of just two "persistent" areas where Australians are experiencing unacceptable levels of harm. Speaking to The Age, she went further, saying some Family Court judges still hold what she described as horrendous views about women, and that there are judges who are simply "not accountable to anybody."

She also described the Family Court system as often doing more harm than it prevents, to the very women and children it's meant to protect.

The report touched on something so many mothers in this community already know in their bones. Cronin said claims made to a parliamentary inquiry were credible: that women have been advised by their own lawyers not to raise family violence or child abuse in court, because doing so could be reframed as an attempt to alienate the other parent.

Read that again. Being honest about the danger your child is in can be used against you.

The court's response so far has been to offer a review of its own cases. The Family Court Accountability Network, run by Janine Rees, put it plainly: that is not independence, it's the institution examining itself.

FCAN is now calling for two things. First, an urgent, genuinely independent inquiry into how children are being removed from their mothers through the family law system, looking at how decisions are made, how family violence and abuse allegations are assessed, and what accountability exists when it goes wrong. Second, something bigger: a completely different model, an integrated, state and territory based system that brings parenting, family violence and child protection together under one roof, the same structural reform recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission.

A friend of mine asked the question that's been sitting with me since. When the people deciding what happens to children and families answer to no one, who's actually watching them?

This is the last piece I'll be sharing from this stretch of coverage, but I don't think it's a coincidence that it's landed the way it has. A newspaper investigation, a state Premier promising action, and now the country's own violence commissioner, all pointing at the same thing, within the space of a week.

Maybe that's what it looks like when enough people finally stop looking away.