Brethren mother flouts court order

AN EXCLUSIVE Brethren mother and two male relatives have risked jail by failing to present two children for planned access visits with their father.

In February, Family Court judge Robert Benjamin convicted the mother, who cannot be named, her son and her son-in-law and imposed a four-month suspended jail sentence on all three after they did not present the children for their first access visit.

The Age has learned that twice since that judgement the two children, aged 13 and eight, have not turned up for scheduled time with their father.

The father has filed an application with the court, arguing that the mother has contravened Justice Benjamin's orders.

But since February the case has become complicated by the fact that the mother is seriously ill and by her appeal against Justice Benjamin's February rulings and the sentence, which she argued was "manifestly excessive". The decision in that appeal has not yet been delivered.

The illness makes a prison term unlikely. The father has now also launched a bid for custody of the two children.