When parental rights mean more than a child’s safety

Ideas please!
I am an Aunty to a young lady who is turning 14 soon. I have been there supporting her through her 14 traumatic and tumultuous years from the moment she was born. My mother and I have been her rock.

She was diagnosed with ASD which requires NDIS support. The first plan was inadequate so my mother and I sourced additional evidence and got a new plan approved recently that will meet all of her needs. Approx 2.5 years ago she decided to live with her grandmother (my mum) and despite the distance, I was emotionally supporting them both through the transition. Prior to this she was going between her parents who split up when she was less than a year old. My brother, her father is a very toxic and narcissistic person who uses manipulation to get what he wants and is quite deluded. Her mother has tried hard, but has her own issues to deal with and overcome. In the past any time a parent would decide they wanted her to live with them she would be kidnapped or picked up from a safe place like school or day care and not return her home and block the other parent from seeing her.

She has lived in very unsafe and unhygienic situations surrounded by neglect, substance abuse, domestic violence and squalor. When she went to live with my mum she was in survival mode and after a few months started unpacking what had happened to her and how abandoned she felt resulting in self harm. Before living with mum she had no supervision or restrictions on what online content she was exposed to and has developed some highly sexualized behaviours.

After engaging in therapy she became very emotionally detached and resistant. Whilst living with mum we gave her rules and boundaries one of which was that her online activity would be monitored, which seems pretty reasonable for an 11 year old imo. Last year when checking her computer mum found content that she was sharing of herself online. Further investigation by police found she was groomed online for sexual predators, for sick people who wanted to watch her performing self harm and was also in cults and was engaging with people linked to terrorist organizations. Child safety, police and other organizations became involved in the process and one local pedophile was captured and more are being tracked down in locations all over the world.

The last 12 months have been intense. She can’t be left alone because of risk of harm to herself and potentially to others. She has made massive progress with psychology, psychiatry, youth workers, child safety support, mental health. Are plans, medications, core support from myself and my mum. I have two kids and a hubby myself so it’s been a strain on our family too as I was relied upon heavily for support. She has been very resistant to me but that’s ok, I’m not going anywhere no matter how much she pushes me away. I’m not going to abandon her.
I’ve been part of every meeting, I’ve taken her to hospital when needed, I’ve been as present and loving as I can whilst still challenging her boundaries emotionally, but without over stepping the mark.

Recently, her father, his partner and two younger siblings moved closer to us. I have trauma related to him and his abusive behaviours. I hate being around him but tried really hard for my niece to feel comfortable, but it became too hard for me to emotionally put myself through the anxiety so I told him that I don’t want to communicate with him. This was because my niece began telling me that he has been telling her that I shouldn’t have an opinion, that her dad said that I’m just a babysitter and I’m not a professional or anything so I shouldn’t be making decisions for her. He denied saying it and my niece defended him, but later confirmed he had been running my mum and I down to her.

He doesn’t follow her safety plans to help keep her safe, he talks badly about everyone to her, he encourages her to keep secrets from and be dishonest to mum and I, he encourages her to participate in unethical behaviour, he encourages her to be rebellious, he undermines all the rules and boundaries mum has set for her, he dictates decisions he has made for her instead of fostering discussion, refuses to compromise, controls everyone by threatening them that he will just take her and we won’t see her again and is a conspiracy theorist so he is filling her full of misinformation plus has made her weight a focus issue for her. All of these things have been addressed by child safety as issues he needs to work on, but none of it is severe or illegal so they can’t intervene. They are about to sign off on the case which means he will have no accountability and we can then only report him if a crisis situation occurs where serious harm has occurred. He is legally allowed to do anything he likes because he is her father and the child protection services agency has said that their primary objective is to reunite children with their families.

He is making her so self conscious of her “disability” in how he talks about it and says he doesn’t want people to treat her like she has a disability…. But she does and she needs support.

I feel like we have done a lot of work and she has done so much more to get to the point she was at a few months ago and there was still a LONG way to go. I’m watching all the progress she has made go sliding out the window, and he is controlling everyone and there’s nothing we can do about it. All I want is for her to be safe physically and emotionally, have the space to breathe without pressure and guilt, be happy, use the services to build skills that will help her achieve a bright and amazing future. But as long as he is in her life, he will only hold her back and turn her into a version of himself- an unemployed, bogan that has delusions of grandiose, is narcissistic and only thinks of how situations will benefit him. What can I do? I’m heart broken and the beautiful girl I watched grow is being destroyed by the person who was supposed to love, nurture and protect her and the system that is supposed to keep her safe. Any suggestions?