Terror in name of the family

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - John Abbott is fresh back from court where, dressed in black uniform and a badge of swastika-like crossed boomerangs, he has been ordered for the next five years to stay 100m from two women he believed to be lesbians.

Another intervention order is in a long legal queue, this time from two mothers and one of their boyfriends, alleging psychological and physical illness since Abbott and a squad of fellow Blackshirts in balaclavas appeared outside their Melbourne home.

But as his 20-year-old son Shane runs through a tune on a grand piano in the background, Abbott is unrepentant: "We will not only continue, we will intensify and it will multiply."

This week, to the alarm of the State Government, the Blackshirts announced plans to set up branches in South Australia, and Abbott claims to be in the process of formalising cells across the continent.

Inevitably, he believes the Blackshirts will emerge as a political party to protect the family against powerful forces determined to crush the fundamental unit of society.

"If we are forced to that stage, yes, we'd have to, because at the end of the day you don't have to be a genius to work out how many Australian people have been affected by this disease [the collapse of the family]. I mean, who isn't affected any more is probably the question."

Abbott is the latest incarnation of Australia's far right, a street-fighter determined through threats, intimidation and demonstrations to stop the rot in society, punish those guilty of wrecking the family and restore the rights of fathers to estranged children.

His targets are women considered to have betrayed husbands through adultery and who have denied them access to their children, homosexuals, lesbian mothers, and churchmen who ignore biblical injunctions on divorce and remarriage.

The tactics are simple but chillingly effective: sudden demonstrations outside suburban homes by squads of men dressed entirely in black, their faces hidden by balaclavas and masks, shouting condemnation of their targets over megaphones and distributing defamatory leaflets to neighbouring letter boxes.

Although Abbott claims a cardinal rule is exercising the right to demonstrate within strict legal boundaries, there have been allegations of abusive and threatening phone calls, intimidation at Family Court hearings, and the possible involvement of Blackshirts in the abduction of a boy.

"It looks like a fascist organisation [and] it acts like one," Melbourne Magistrate Rod Crisp said this week when he ordered Abbott and fellow Blackshirts to stay away from two women threatened with a "visit" when they refused to answer Abbott's suggestion they were lesbians. "It is calculated to scare people."

Abbott has no argument with that. Impact is everything. "You can go in there wearing a Mickey Mouse suit or you can go in there feeling very, very determined. Black is a determined colour. It also represents that we are mourning for our children, for our marriage, for our families."

The Blackshirts is an angry organisation, mainly of men but with a handful of women whose role is confined to administration - "I don't want the ladies confronted in any way", says Abbott - militantly dedicated to righting moral wrongs.

Like the imagery, its philosophy and tactics have their roots in the kind of frustration, sense of helplessness and moral indignation that in the 1930s fuelled the working-class origins of European fascists and Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in Britain.

It has a run of Australian progenitors, from the ultra-nationalist League of National Security and Old Guard of the 1930s, to the League of Rights and, most recently, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party.

There is, as in most movements of the far right, a belief in conspiracy.

"I know that we're fighting powerful forces, extremely powerful," Abbott says. "I'm not going to go into details on this one because it's not proper I believe, at the moment anyway, [but] the enemy, so to speak, is entrenched in high places.

"These people have every intention of demolishing the term marriage, destroying the family and taking the children. So I'm not going to underestimate them, nor am I going to give them any opportunity whatsoever."

Because of this belief in a greater evil, the Blackshirts are organised on a classic cut-off structure, with cells of no more than 10 and the members of each cell unaware of the composition of the others.

Abbott says balaclavas, face scarves and masks are worn to protect members from prosecution under Section 121 of the Family Law Act, which has strict injunctions on identifying people involved in its proceedings.

Demonstrations are organised within the letter of the law, tying the hands of police who are faxed details of the action in advance and who have no power to intervene in peaceful protest.

Blackshirts emotionally involved with a target are not allowed to take part. They are not even told a demonstration is to take place.

This is all about pain, the emotional agony of fathers who believe they have been unjustly ejected from their families and estranged from their children through legal orders that have frequently triggered violent - even fatal - confrontations at Family Courts.

Abbott's trauma was the catalyst. A decade ago, with an apparently contented wife and sons, Jason and Shane, then aged 10 and 8, and a successful business in Melbourne, Abbott was building a vast new home on the Gold Coast, complete with swimming pool and tennis court.

"Then of course this person, a builder, has it off with my wife and I'm going,'Whoa, that's not right, that's not right'. I was very deeply hurt, but my greater hurt came later when I realised my marriage, my family, my home, my children's lives, my entire extended family's lives, had now become a trampling ground for rogue elephants - the Family Court, the Child Support Agency, the legal fraternity and anyone else who wanted to nitpick like vultures at the fallen carcass of the family."

Worst of all, Abbott's access to his sons was restricted to one phone call a week. Shane finally came to live with him a year ago. Jason has not spoken to his father for 10 years.

But if pain launched the Blackshirts, it has now become their weapon. "Our situation is this," Abbott says. "If a so-called friend or workmate has it off with my wife, he can expect reprisals - immediate reprisals."

Those "reprisals" have terrified their victims. Separated Melbourne mother Michelle Knight's young son Andrew vanished for 10 weeks, apparently cared for by unnamed militant men's groups. Two months after he was found and returned, the Blackshirts arrived.

Leaflets to neighbours graphically denounced Knight and her morals and urged them to let the young mother know "enough is enough". Terrified of another abduction, Knight has taken Andrew out of school and lives as a virtual prisoner in her home.

Seeking an intervention order against Abbott and the Blackshirts in court this week, a grandmother told of her terror when a group of men in balaclavas appeared outside her house, shouting accusations against her daughter through a megaphone and handing out letters accusing her of destroying her family.

"I was absolutely terrified because I didn't know who they were, what they were, why they were there," she told the court.

Another victim told the Family Court of her continuing terror since the Blackshirts appeared in her life. Abbott allegedly called on behalf of her husband - banned from contact with his son because of sexual abuse - and later led two demonstrations outside her home.

Another victim detailed similar fear to Melbourne's Herald Sun following the appearance of Abbott and his Blackshirts in her street. The woman was making a cup of tea in her kitchen when her 5-year-old son ran in from the lounge room, screaming, "Mummy, mummy, there are bad men outside with masks on" ... He was green and white-lipped.

"I picked him up and quickly took him to his room. I tippy-toed and glanced out of the window - not going directly to the window - and saw these men out there. They were wearing black shirts, black pants, black caps with scarf-like material covering their faces ... I was hysterical."

Blackshirt victims are not only allegedly errant wives and homebreakers. Family Court lawyers Mark Finn and Sue Macgregor say they have been spat at, hit and threatened by Blackshirts, and women clients are intimidated by Blackshirts sitting in uniform at the rear of the court.

The church is seen as fair game. Abbott was fined after disrupting a service by accusing an Anglican priest of adultery.

He feels no contrition: "The Anglican Church totally ignores the contents of the Bible ... We've demonstrated outside the church on many occasions and we'll continue."

Homosexuality is another evil. "I don't have a gripe against a person who thinks he is a homosexual and keeps it within, but the moment they act it out, I have a problem.

"I do somehow believe that the act of homosexuality and paedophilia can be related to a certain extent, on the grounds that, even as we speak, laws are being changed to bring the [age of] consent of our children lower and lower and lower."

The law has extremely limited ability to block the Blackshirts.Their demonstrations are protected by the lawful right of peaceful protest, they skirt closely laws against stalking and harassment, and use masks and cut-off cells to conceal identity.

Nonetheless, the Victorian Government has written to Abbott warning of the criminal nature of the group's "intimidatory and cowardly behaviour", and its intention to try to use the Crime Act to stamp it out. "If they think they can pump around Victoria in their black shirts harassing women under the guise of protecting marriage, they've got another think coming," said State Attorney-General Rob Hulls.

Abbott remains unmoved. He identifies with Leonidas and the 300 Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae against the Persians in 480BC, casting himself in similar heroic pose as defender of the family and, ergo, civilisation.

"Family values are the foundation of all laws because they stick very closely to moral bounds. When the law no longer sticks to moral bounds it is no longer the law but a repression - and that's what we've come to.

"We, the Blackshirts, are saying ,'No more. Back off - now'."