'Paternity fraud' and the invisible child

This article analyses Australian newspaper coverage of the Magill v Magill case, a landmark legal case in which a man sued his wife for ‘paternity deceit’. Using results from a thematic analysis of newspaper reporting of the Magill v Magill case from 2002–06, it investigates the way the story has been framed in Australian newspapers as ‘paternity fraud’ and what that means for how DNA paternity testing is understood and used. The article then compares the findings with a later magazine report of interviews with the Magill children. The results show that, while the father and child’s relationship was central to the DNA paternity test itself, the way the story was framed as a gender contest between adults was so powerful that children and their interests became invisible.