A Daughter v A Father

The plaintiff seeks a freezing order against the assets of defendant pending the resolution of these proceedings. The plaintiff, who will be called “the daughter” in these reasons, brings these proceedings against her father alleging that he sexually abused her in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she was a minor under his care. The father denies any misconduct in relation to the daughter and resists the making of any freezing order against him. As the daughter was a minor at the time of the alleged sexual misconduct by the father and is now the complainant in criminal proceedings in Queensland against the father, these reasons do not publish any facts which would reveal the identity of the daughter and the defendant is referred to as “the father”.

The matter came into the Equity Duty list on an ex parte basis on 11 December 2025. Ex parte relief in the form of a freezing order was granted. On the return of the Summons the matter was argued on a contested basis on 18 December 2025. The Court gave its decision and made orders on 19 December 2025 and published these reasons on 23 December 2025.

This interlocutory contest was effectively argued on all sides. Ms B Epstein instructed by Carroll and O’Dea, solicitors of Sydney, appeared for the plaintiff and Mr G. Radcliff of the Queensland Bar instructed by Hannay Lawyers, appeared for the defendant by AVL and then in person.

The plaintiff/daughter originally sought to commence these proceedings by way of Summons in the proceedings separate from existing proceedings which had been commenced by a Statement of Claim in the Common Law Division of this Court, seeking damages for personal injury against the father for assault. But at the hearing for ex parte relief on 11 December 2025, the Court reconstituted the proceedings so that the plaintiff’s proposed Summons became a notice of Motion in the common law proceedings. This simplified the various contests between the parties into a single proceeding consistent with the objectives of Civil Procedure Act 2005 Part 6.

The daughter’s case may be shortly described. Its details are provided to this Court through the affidavit the daughter’s solicitor, Ms Hayley Aldrich. Through her the daughter’s account is that the defendant perpetrated acts of sexual abuse upon the plaintiff during the period 1976 to 1984. The abuse allegedly occurred from a time when the daughter was six years of age through until she was 14. Most of the abuse occurred in New South Wales but on occasion when the daughter and father were on family holidays in Queensland, the abuse is also said to have occurred there.

The plaintiff reported aspects of the alleged abuse a long time ago. In approximately 1988, when she was about 18, she told the NSW Police of the alleged abuse and charges were brought against the defendant. He faced a trial in which the daughter gave evidence. This resulted in a not guilty verdict in 1990.

The daughter’s account of the abuse New South Wales is set out in a detailed statement she made to NSW Police on 1 December 1988, the statement which provided the foundation for the criminal proceedings against the father. Notwithstanding the father’s acquittal the same statement will be used as the foundation for the civil case the daughter brings against father. The Court has reviewed the 1 December 1988 statement. Some features of the abuse recounted in this statement contain details that belong to the fabric of a consistent story and would be difficult to invent with the consistent inclusion of details that tend to show that the applicant was drawing upon an actual picture of events in memory. Of course, the details daughter recounts may be fabricated, and the father denies them. But the final hearing of these proceedings is likely to be a very high-stakes contest between the daughter, who propounds what she says is a genuine story and a father who says it is a fantasy.

The charges against the father leading this acquittal in New South Wales only related to alleged abuse within New South Wales. In 2024 the daughter approached the Queensland police in relation to abuse that she alleged had also taken place during her childhood, when the family was holidaying in Queensland. The daughter made another detailed statement to the Queensland Police in September 2024 as to the portion of the abuse which she alleged the father perpetrated upon her in Queensland. It is unnecessary to detail the alleged abuse in these reasons, other than to say that the daughter’s detailed statement to the police describing the alleged abuse, shows that she can give a comprehensive evidentiary account from a child’s perspective but with the insight of an adult of what she says the father forced her to experience on many family holidays in Queensland.

The father denies any wrongdoing. Whether he engaged in this alleged abuse is a matter for trial at a final hearing in which the daughter’s credibility and the father’s credibility will each be pitted against the other. All that can be said in this interlocutory hearing is that the daughter’s evidence is internally consistent and appears to be credible and is capable of being accepted by a trier of fact upon a contest at final hearing. Beyond that it is difficult to predict the outcome of the final hearing.

Several of the details discernible from the daughter’s evidence add probative weight to the evidence of sexual assault, which it is anticipated that the daughter will advance against the father at final hearing. Some of these very same factors are also relevant to the daughter’s case on the present application for a freezing order. The listing of these details below nevertheless recognises that the father has not yet adduced his own version of events to refute or balance the daughter’s allegations.

The daughter’s account narrates multiple incidents of abuse which have the following recurring features. The father is said in the daughter’s account to have used pretexts to be alone with the daughter, so that abuse could occur. The father is said in the daughter’s account to have consistently exploited and misused the natural trust that the mother and other family members reposed in the father caring for the daughter to leave the daughter alone with him, which enabled the alleged abuse to occur. The father is said in the daughter’s account to have misused his parental authority as a father to emotionally manipulate and coerce the daughter so she would not confide in other family members about his abuse. This worsened as she entered her teenage years, with the father maintaining a veil of imposed secrecy about their sexual activity. The father is said in the daughter’s account to have essentially led a double life, misleading family members and people in the daughter’s wider world into believing he was her protector but privately acting as her abuser.

The father’s deceit and abuse of the trust of his daughter and other family members are a deeply embedded theme in the conduct alleged against the father. Such deceit will often be an implicit theme in many cases of sexual abuse within families and within institutions where minors are placed in the trust of others.

The daughter has now brought these civil proceedings against the father for assault. The father resides in Queensland in the Gold Coast area in a residential property, aspects of the title to which are dealt with below (“the Gold Coast property”). The father was charged on 8 October 2025 by Queensland police with the conduct that the daughter alleges against him in Queensland. The solicitor for the daughter understands from Queensland police that they had spoken to the father in about late September 2025 and taken a statement from him prior to him being formally charged in Queensland.

The father was the registered proprietor of the Gold Coast property for several years before October 2025. On 3 October 2025 a dealing was lodged to transfer the Gold Coast property into the names of the father and his wife. The father separated from and divorced the daughter’s mother many years ago. His current wife is of Japanese descent and the daughter has expressed concern that the father’s connections with Japan through his wife may make it easier for him to enable the transfer or expend his assets out of the jurisdiction.

The legal principles governing the grant of freezing orders in these circumstances are well-established.

The Uniform Civil Procedure Rules (UCPR) r 25.11 provides:

UCPR r 25.14 (1) and (4) provide that if an applicant has a good arguable case on an accrued or prospective cause of action:

The plaintiff bears the onus of proving both the requirements of the rule and the entitlement to the relief: Drama Unit Pty Ltd v Cook [2019] NSWCA 276 at [29] (Leeming JA). The freezing order injunction “exists not to create additional rights but to enable a court to protect its process from abuse in relation to the enforcement of its orders. It is neither a species of anticipatory execution nor does it give a form of security for any judgment which may ultimately be awarded”: Jackson v Sterling Industries Ltd (1987) 162 CLR 612, 622. A freezing order injunction is an exceptional interlocutory remedy which “should not be granted lightly”, so the Court must carefully scrutinise the application for relief: Frigo v Culhaci [1998] NSWCA 88 and Cardile v LED Builders Pty Ltd (1999) 198 CLR 380, 403-404. Bond J also usefully summarised the applicable principles in Parbery v QNI Metals Pty Ltd [2018] QSC 107.

The evidence which is relevant to establishing a case at final hearing may also be relevant to showing that it is reasonable to infer that the defendant unless restrained, is not the sort of person who would preserve his assets intact so they might be available to his judgment creditor: Patterson V BTR Engineering (Aust) Pty Ltd (1989) 18 NSWLR 319. Here a plaintiff such as the daughter must as a general rule establish that there is a real danger that by reason of the defendant disposing of assets within this jurisdiction, or otherwise dealing with assets in some fashion that that the plaintiff, if she succeeds not be able to have her judgment satisfied: Patterson V BTR Engineering (Aust) Pty Ltd (1989) 18 NSWLR 319.

The father submits that there has been silence from the daughter and that all her evidence is given through her solicitor. The implication of this submission is that her case is very weak, as she is not prepared to swear to it. But this argument is not persuasive. The daughter has given evidence already in criminal proceedings. She made a detailed statement to police at the age of 18 and another more recently, both of which are available. The first statement was used to ground her evidence in the first criminal trial in New South Wales against the father in 1990. The second statement is likely to be the foundation for the current criminal trial in Queensland. It is not uncommon in interlocutory applications for hearsay evidence such as this to be received and acted upon.

The father submits: that this is a very old case with the incidents alleged occurring over 40 years ago, that third-party evidence will be scarce or non-existent when this the matter finally comes to hearing, and that a jury of the father’s peers found him not guilty decades ago. Once again, the implication is that the plaintiff’s case is very weak and not sufficient for the Court to act upon to make the freezing order that the daughter now wishes to extend.

But this argument is also not persuasive. All that the father’s acquittal shows is that his prosecutors could not establish the case against him beyond reasonable doubt. But that says little about prospects for proof on the balance of probabilities, even with such serious allegations. And it may be inferred that the daughter was thought sufficiently credible for both prosecutions to be launched on the basis that there were reasonable prospects of their success.

The father submits that there is no explanation for the daughter’s delay in bringing these proceedings. As the allegations in the Statement of Claim are no longer statute barred, it is hard to accept the father’s argument that some explanation for the delay in bringing them must now be given. For a long time, the acts the daughter complains of were statute barred and could not be brought, but they are no longer because of the passing of the Limitation Amendment (Child Abuse) Act 2016. This legislative change extending the limitation period in cases of child abuse should be explanation enough for the timing of the daughter now bringing these proceedings.

The father further submits that the affidavit of the solicitor for the plaintiff expresses the solicitor’s “fears” that the father either may leave the jurisdiction, because of the current criminal charges and that he may seek to hide his assets here or overseas. And the father also submits that these are the solicitor’s fears and not those of the daughter. The father’s contention is correct: that mere assertions of “fears” do not alone ground the making a freezing order. And as the father submits it can be weighed in the balance against the daughter’s case for a freezing order that the father has had both a stable matrimonial relationship and property ownership in Queensland for many years.

The principles stated in Patterson v BTR Engineering are important here. The central allegations of the plaintiff’s case are allegations of sexual assault. But as the account above shows, the allegations involve a complex, long-standing and organised scheme of deception and misuse of the trust of other family members to enable those assaults to take place. To use the language of Gleeson CJ in Patterson v BTR Engineering, the evidence of the father’s conduct relevant to proving the daughter’s case at final hearing shows that “he is not the sort of person who would, unless restrained, preserve his assets intact so that they might be available to his judgment creditor”.

This is so for three reasons. First, although the father was not accused of fraud or financial crimes, the allegations against him if proven, would demonstrate a sustained, organised and sophisticated course of deception and misuse of the trust of close family members over a period of about eight years to achieve objectives of his sexual gratification. Someone qualified to engage in such a scheme of deception over such a long period is the kind of person that the Court reasonably infers would be likely to dispose of his assets to avoid enforcement of a judgment, especially if an adverse judgment were on the cards. Given the nature of the conduct alleged against the father to be adduced at final hearing and his capacity to use deception that such allegations show, this is not a case where the daughter must establish additional specific conduct moving assets out of the reach of the daughter before she is now entitled to a freezing order.

Secondly, apart from the above theme of deception of others, the allegations if established involve such a degree of abuse of trust and disregard for the integrity, dignity and potential of the daughter that they are emblematic of a character that is so self-focused that he would probably have no compunction in shifting assets beyond the reach of the daughter, should she become a successful judgment creditor.

Finally, there is the evidence that the father has already shown a consciousness of the risk of losing his assets because of these proceedings. He has already taken steps to protect his assets by transferring his interest in the Queensland real estate into a joint tenancy with his wife. The true import of this transfer must be recognised. It means that should the father, for example, die prior to the resolution of these proceedings that the whole of his real estate would be unavailable to meet a judgment in the plaintiff’s favour.

But the daughter has not yet proved her case, and the father needs to be able to defend these proceedings. It is just that in the circumstances the Court provide some restraint on the father’s dealings with the Queensland real estate without making a full freezing order. At one level the father’s transfer into the wife’s name shows that he is not prepared to place the whole of the Queensland property out of the daughter’s reach. But it does also show a consciousness of taking steps to place part of the property (and potentially all the property) beyond the daughter’s capacity to recover it.

On balance the Court at this stage accepts that in addition to the allegations against the father based in evidence for the final hearing of the proceedings, there is only the limited evidence of creating a joint tenancy to show evidence of manoeuvres to insulate assets from future recovery. But both factors – the allegations at final hearing and the creation of the joint tenancy – taken together are sufficient to enliven the Court’s jurisdiction to make a freezing order in this case.

Submissions on behalf of the father emphasised that this case should be seen as no different from that considered by Chen J in another case of institutional sexual abuse, Bennett (bht Jones) v State of New South Wales [2022] NSWSC 1406, in which Chen J dismissed the claim for a freezing order against an alleged sexual abuser teaching in a State school. This argument is not persuasive. In Bennett (bht Jones) v State of New South Wales Chen J was not asked to consider in his analysis any evidence such as that available in this case, of long-standing deceptive behaviour by a defendant to enable the defendant’s alleged sexual abuse.

The Court should give the father sufficient scope to defend himself in these proceedings. The Court will limit the freezing order in two ways. It will confine it to the Queensland real estate, so that he is free to use his superannuation reasonably to defend himself.

The father, who is now remarried, says that a freezing order will cause hardship to his wife who is now a joint tenant of the property. To reduce the possibility of such hardship the Court will modify the freezing order to so that it operates only as an order that the father must give 21 days’ clear notice of his proposed intention to dispose of or deal with the Queensland real estate. The undertaking as to damages given by the daughter with the original ex parte freezing order will continue, although the risk associated with any such undertaking is now minimal.

As to costs, the usual order in a case such as this is that each for a freezing order will be that party’s costs in the proceedings. Even though the daughter has been successful on this application she should not recover costs for the application if she is ultimately unsuccessful in the proceedings.

Accordingly, the Court makes the following orders and directions: