Ray Watson

Who was Ray Watson?

Raymond Sanders "Ray" Watson AM was an Australian judge of the Family Court.

Watson was born in Sydney to a road contractor, and received sporadic education. He worked for the New South Wales transport department in order to put himself through high school and studied law at the University of Sydney, although his study was interrupted by service in the navy during World War II. He survived a kamikaze attack on HMAS Australia in 1944.

Watson became a barrister and rose to sit as a judge on the first Family Court in the 1970s, where he advocated the priority of children's welfare and no-fault divorce. The changes attracted significant controversy; one fellow judge was murdered, and Watson was injured in a bomb attack on his home in Greenwich that killed his wife Pearl in 1984. Watson suffered a series of strokes and a brain haemorrhage in July 2003, which impacted on his mental acuity.