Dads not happy with mum's violence challenge

A fathers' group is outraged Christchurch police have been challenged for informing a dad that his children had been present during a domestic-violence incident between their mother and her new partner.

The father learnt of the incident more than a year later when his son mentioned fighting and that they had been "in a police car" when they were taken to the safety of their grandmother's home.

Police attended the incident but did not to charge the new partner at the mother's request.

When the father failed to get information from his former partner or her mother, he asked the police for details.

When he was told that her new partner had been warned by police for pushing her against a wall, the mother complained to the Human Rights Commission that her right to privacy had been breached.

The Director of Human Rights Proceedings took up the case on the mother's behalf, challenging the police decision to inform the father of the March 2002 incident.

Court orders prohibit The Press from identifying the parents or their children.

The Human Rights Review Tribunal rejected the challenge after the police showed the request had been made through the Official Information Act.

But Darrell Carlin, spokesman for the Union of Fathers, said it showed once again that the authorities were failing to make children's rights the priority.

"Fathers need to be in a position to protect their children (but) it happens quite frequently that fathers don't get to see what's going on," he said.

"He could have gone through the custody case and the court wouldn't have been notified that this had gone on because it didn't involve both (the mother and father).

"This case was about the mother's dignity and feeling of humiliation, but we've got to bring it back to the kids and what it's like for them and what it's like to be taken out of their house in the middle of the night in a police car.

"To keep the checks and balances, fathers definitely have the right to know whether their children are likely to be in any kind of danger."

Former District Court judge Robert Hesketh, acting as the Director of Human Rights Proceedings, took the case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal last month because of concerns about the way the police had balanced the mother's right to privacy against the father's right to know about the situation in which his children were living.

The tribunal said the incident happened when the father's two children were in their mother's home and her new partner apparently "became angry ... and shoved (the mother) against the wall".

The police were called, but the mother did not want charges laid and the partner was warned.

After hearing about the incident 16 months later, the father applied to the police for the official report of the incident.

Constable Glen Tweedie, of Sydenham police, told the tribunal that the application cited the information act.

"Under the circumstances I believe that as the father of the children, (the father) was entitled to a copy of (the report)," he said.

He said the father already knew about the incident, so the privacy issues were minor.

The mother claimed the information would be used against her in the custody battle.

The tribunal ruled it was "unrealistic" to suggest the incident was irrelevant to the custody hearing and described as "altogether unconvincing" the mother's claim that she would not have wanted to know if the situation had been reversed.

The tribunal found the police made an appropriate assessment of the conflicting rights to privacy and knowledge.

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