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A Canberra mother went to police during a custody battle over a father-and-son game of "nipple cripple". The woman asked the Federal Circuit Court to limit the boy's contact with his father because of perceived fears for his safety. The mother said the father permitted and undertook activities that placed the boy at risk. She complained he let the boy watch DVDs before school, swim when it was cold, climb on the roof of a shed, camp in isolated places, and that the father had overturned a canoe purposefully as a prank. On one occasion, she took the boy to the police station after he showed her bruises he had suffered during a game called "nipple cripple" he had played with his father and one of the boy's cousins. She also said the child did not eat the food his father packed him for lunch. Despite the animosity, after the pair had separated the woman raised the idea of the father being a sperm donor so she could have a second child. The mother said the father was bipolar, was impulsive, and didn't have a good sense of duty of care. But the father sought shared care, so he could spend more time with his son and the mother would be forced to share parenting decisions with him. The man said the mother felt she was the primary carer and could make determinations without his input. He said he was constantly paranoid about what was going to be held against him when the boy visited. The court heard the parents' relationship had been marred previously by violence. A family consultant told the court the boy enjoyed time with both parents, who had complementary relationships with the child. The consultant said the father provided outdoors and rough-and-tumble play, while the mother nurtured and focused on his subjective emotional state. But the court heard the parents could not parent co-operatively and viewed their child-rearing styles are oppositional, rather than complementary. Judge Warwick Neville said both parents were devoted and diligent parents, but had shown poor judgment and poor self-control. "In my view the mother has a propensity to catastrophise situations involving X and in consequence to be overly protective of him," the judge wrote. "In my view, the mother [displays an] almost relentless attempt to micro-manage X's life, even when he is with his father. "Her intentions are protective, but they must, at times, almost be suffocating." The judge said the mother had an obsessional need for contact and control and had an inability to perceive the need to change behaviour, so as to avoid the risk of contest with the father. "In my view, the Mother will never be adequately satisfied about X's safety while-ever he is in the father's care. "[The father's] failure at times to regulate his frustrations has also likely heightened the mother's anxiety, and exacerbated her lack of confidence in him." The parents were ordered to shared parental responsibility. The father was also granted extra nights with the boy, on the condition he provide psychiatric reports to the mother three times a year to prove he had no mental health issues.

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