COURTS continue to underplay the seriousness of childpornography, child welfare experts have warned after the Family Courtlast month ordered an eight-year-old boy to live with his strippermother, despite her partner's obsession with pornographic images ofyoung girls.

Family Court judge Tim Carmody'sdecision on January 16 to grant the mother custody over the child'sgrandparents, in part because her boyfriend's collection of 350,000pornographic images and 6400 videos focused on young girls and notboys, left welfare advocates aghast.

"The decision reflects an ongoing diminishing of the judiciary'sview about the seriousness of child pornography," Australian ChildhoodFoundation chief executive Joe Tucci said.

"This wasn't a casual interest in child pornography. It was anobsession. It would invade this man's entire life. He would take thatwith him to his girlfriends, and any child's emotional environment.(The boy) couldn't help but be at least psychologically abused."

The boyfriend was jailed in 2005 for his massive collection of childpornography, but Justice Carmody found him to be remorseful. The boy'smother, who has raised the boy for all his life but the past year, wasasked to assure the court she would not live with her partner or leavehim and her son alone together.

The grandparents were supported in their claim for temporary custodyby European Union research presented by University of South Australiaprofessor Freda Briggs, which found more than 70 per cent of men whodownloaded child porn had already been a child abuser or would be sosoon after.

Historian John Hirst, author of Kangaroo Court: Family Law inAustralia, said the difficulty with Justice Carmody's decision is thatit couldn't be enforced.

"The Family Court has no agency to monitor and enforce its rulings,"he said. "If the mother, hard pressed, leaves the boy with her partner,no one will know."