The Weapon of choice

Fiona* is one of our lived experience consultant. In this blog, she talks about Family Court.

The UK Family Court handles over 55,000 cases a year, a large proportion of which dealing with child contact arrangements. These hearings relate to the welfare of a child, including where the child should live and the level of contact they should be having with a non-resident parent . These proceedings are often undertaken when parents are unable to agree on contact arrangements between themselves and often take the form of Child Arrangement Orders. In cases where accusations of Domestic Abuse are heard, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and Practice Direction 12J ensure that safeguarding measures are implemented and finding of facts are made when making judgements regarding Child Custody Arrangements.   

In the UK, The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 defines children affected by domestic abuse as direct victims in their own right. This legal recognition reflects decades of research demonstrating the harm that domestic abusers cause to their children. If there is clear and proven evidence that a child has been exposed to domestic abuse, either directly or by having witnessed abuse towards a parent, then a child should remain in the care of the protective parent with safeguarding measures in place to protect them from further harm. 

There is often a presumption that Domestic Abuse victims and their children will be protected in the Family Court and that mothers are treated more favourably with regards to custody arrangements. Although there is a great deal of secrecy around the Family Court proceedings and strict limitations imposed on media reporting, it is becoming increasingly clear from listening to victims who are choosing to speak out that the Family Court is systematically failing victims and that children are being put at great risk of harm by those employed to protect them.  

“Mothers are being punished for attempting to protect children from the domestic violence perpetrator, having possibly already been punished in the child protection system for ‘failing to protect’ their children from him. Under the child protection system, mothers are punished for ‘exposing’ their children to a perpetrator by not moving them away from him or excluding him from the family home. Yet when a mother complies with the demands of the child protection system and separates herself and the children from the perpetrator, within a few months she may find herself in the family court being punished for trying to keep the children safe from the domestic violence perpetrator by limiting his access to the children (see Hester, 2011; Saunders and Oglesby, 2016). 

 Dr Emma Katz (@DrEmmaKatz)

 Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth 

On Wednesday 5th October 2022, The Family Justice Council convened for its annual conference. The title for this year’s conference was: “The Long and Winding Road”. Head of the Family Court, Sir Andrew Macfarlane, delivered the opening address and the event was attended by professionals in paediatrics, psychology as well as the judiciary and senior family law council. There was much discussion around the recent publication by journalist Hannah Summers of The Guardian following an investigation into unregulated Parental Alienation “experts” and their role in an unrecorded number of UK Family Court child custody cases. Whilst expert speaker Jamie Craig, Head of the British Psychology Society, acknowledged that parental alienation is a pseudoscience conducted by unregulated and unqualified experts operating in the Family Court, there was no acknowledgement by the senior Judiciary of the harm it has caused to the thousands of victims and their children who have been deeply affected by parental alienation as a counter accusation to domestic abuse, often resulting in child removal from the safe parent.  

“I’m trying to understand the logic of a child being moved to live with a parent because it’s considered that the other parent didn’t promote contact, and the new resident parent then preventing contact with the parent the child was with originally but nothing is done about this” 

Dr. Adrienne Barnett (@BarnettAdrienne)

Reader in Law, Brunel Law School, Brunel University 

The Family Court has become a weapon of choice for perpetrators of domestic abuse intent on inflicting further harm on their victim. Armed with their parental right, domestic abusers manipulate systems, professionals and use children to continue to harm and control. Exploiting the family courts’ inability to safeguard. Vulnerable victims are often unable to fund professional legal representation either through the Legal Aid agency or with personal funds and find themselves with huge financial debt or the prospect of representing themselves in court proceedings causing further trauma at an already deeply difficult time.  

In 2020, The Harm Report “Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases” was published. The report was undertaken to provide an understanding of how effectively the family courts identify and respond to allegations of domestic abuse and other serious offences.  

The report found that thousands of victims in the UK are reporting misconduct by social workers, Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) officers and judiciary who enable perpetrators to remove children from their care citing unsupported accusations of neglect, mental health disability and parental alienation. Our family justice system is being used by perpetrators of domestic abuse to continue post-separation abuse and manipulate professionals into their strategy. Domestic abuse including rape, assault and coercive and controlling behaviour, is minimised, ignored and removed from court documentation by child professionals. Victims are threatened with child removal if they continue to report domestic abuse or raise complaints about staff misconduct. Our family courts are knowingly and intentionally forcing children into contact with abusers.  

The UK government responded to the report that they had “carefully considered the panel’s conclusions” and were “determined to take action to improve the experience of victims of domestic abuse in our family courts”. The Ministry of Justice said it was committed to both immediate action and longer-term reform, to ensure the system fully supports those who are victims of domestic abuse or otherwise vulnerable, and delivers the right outcomes for them and their children. Yet little seems to have happened since.  

"It is essential that the fundamental changes to family court proceedings recommended by the Harm Panel over two years ago are implemented as a matter of urgency because the system continues to fail children and victims of domestic abuse and continues to put them at risk of harm." 

Shera Research Group @SheraFamily 

The Ministry of Justice needs to urgently review Domestic Abuse training. I am (alongside many others) deeply disturbed by evidence of professional misconduct and clear Human Rights breaches in child custody arrangements involving cases of domestic abuse and I would urge Sir Andrew Macfarlane, head of the Family Court to engage directly with victims to address wrong doing and begin urgent reform.  

Victims should not be silenced whilst more mothers and their children are failed and further traumatised by the very system employed to protect them.  

*Name changed to protect her identity.