Tag Archives: family court

Why does Everyone Hate the Family Court ? Part Four.

Heads You Lose: Tails You Lose

Sarah Phillimore writes: I am grateful for this post from Emma Sutcliffe, part 4 in our series ‘why does everyone hate the family courts’? Emma’s previous post on this topic can be found here.

The family justice system is very much in the public eye at the time of writing on May 15th 2019- 120 MPs have called for an inquiry into how the courts operate and The Victoria Derbyshire programme has hosted two discussions so far. It seems to be promoting the Women’s Aid line that the family courts ‘push contact with abusers at all costs’. I don’t think that is true.

But what I can’t deny is the level of fear, misery and misinformation around the family justice system and the fact that people often come out of it more brutalised than when they went in. What is the problem? How can we fix it? The only way I know how, having very little by way of political or media influence, is to continue to host these kind of discussions in the hope that somehow, some where a seed will be planted that may grow.

I don’t agree with everything that Emma says, I don’t agree the system is ‘set up against women’ . I am also concerned to see a picture painted of two parents – who presumably at one point loved each other enough to have children together – who now treat each other as bitter enemies. I don’t think the family court is responsible for that level of bad feeling, but I accept that as an arena it is the worst place to put frightened or angry people.

However, the point of this post is not to get Emma to agree with me or hound her for being ‘wrong’. The point is to identify where our perceptions differ and what shapes that. Is that divide a product of misunderstanding? Or some deeper ideological differences? Is the perception of parents’ clouded by their pain and misery? Or is my response foggy or jaded because of professional arrogance?

What should be happening here is the entirely sensible requirement when preparing for an adversarial environment, that you develop a theory of the case and you prepare your cross examination around that. A case with no strong narrative arc is messy and uncompelling. If the burden of proof is on you then a lack of focus on your theory of the case may be enough to sink you. What Emma describes here sounds to me like game playing of a much more cynical kind and verging on the unethical. Its not a tactic I ever employ or would ever advise. Once your life is being held up to microscopic examination in a court setting, then playing games should be the very last thing on your mind.

However, this was Emma’s experience. And, as she so powerfully says, no one should ever have to ‘put on a performance’ to persuade a court to analyse the evidence before it and make a decision in the best interests of the child. Our courts should not be a theatre. If there is anything about the system and the people in it that encourages this – it needs to stop.

How does a barrister prepare you to lose your children?

By roughing you over as if you’re a criminal. Family court is vilifying, humiliating and terrifying. It is worse when the narcissist you divorced is your opponent. Because the only person a narcissist loves is themselves and they’re quite prepared to lose whatever it takes in the process so that they don’t lose face. It’s called a ‘scorched earth policy’ and my barrister pummelled me in readiness of every court statement and appearance for the inevitable lies, fury and shouting that accompanies any head to head with someone who would even suggest their own children would be better in the care system than with their own mother.

The barrister who worked for me made me look straight on at the loss of my children and study assiduously both the recommendations of the court and the people who made the recommendations. ‘what’s the sound track in the court?’ He asked when we first met — some 16 hearings in by the point.

‘You are a bad parent’ he told me. Looking directly at me as he delivered a crushing home truth — “because just by even being in family court and having strangers decide how your children are going to play out their childhood you have let them down. In the eyes of the court therefore you are a bad parent”.

Am having got me to a state of despair he then sought to get me ‘judge ready’.

“This is the Anna* we need the judge to see — an exhausted, working mum who has been driven to seek to need the court’s help to deal with an utterly uncooperative parent. We need to mitigate risk to the judge — that you can accept your flaws but still do your best for the children. Let us let the baddest parent show themselves for what they are. Otherwise this just looks to the judge like two very clever people who are adept at arguing whilst their children look on. You need to accept and convey that you are contrite and remorseful that such behaviour has and would cause them emotional harm if it were to continue.”

And with that I had an epiphany.

Like it of not; family court is a game of chess. And the system is set up against women. Children are the sacrificial pawns and to win this game I had to have the agility of the Queen and read the board. The king appears to be the dominant player, but it’s the queen who can contort to whatever move is needed to protect and win the game.

And so, with that in mind I determined to adjust my mindset and moves. I could lose 50 percent of holiday time with my children for a few years until they get wise enough to reject their father’s bullying by themselves or I could dig my heels in, battle the court officers and keep portraying myself as a battling parent too determined to beat my ex than protect my children.

Thanks to that roughing over by the barrister the small lose or ultimate lose strategy was easy to shapeshift into.

Once he knew I understood the games and the rules, the barrister and my solicitor then crafted every statement and every question in every hearing thereafter to play to the soundtrack of the court — hardworking, long suffering caring mother, able to withstand every ludicrous allegation and still demonstrate cooperativity.

And as we walked into the final hearing — the narcissist did what narcissists ultimately do and lost it when he didn’t get exactly what he believed he was entitled to — adoration and dominance.

Judges do not like risk. And they do not like arrogance. They care not for how much money someone has, what car they drive, how well connected they are or if they are dressed in Armani or Primarni. They want to know that you show up, you accept help, you recognise your flaws and vulnerabilities and you put your children first. Game over. I lost the small battle.

The loss was wonderful because it was palatable. And in his summing up the judge adeptly dismissed every taunt, claim and even overuled his own biased officers. Furthermore he praised me for my courage under persistent sniper fire and concluded with words that were music — the music of the court — to my ears and to my children:

‘I cannot be confident that if residency were given to Dad that given the ludicrous allegations Mum has successfully defended Dad would not seek continued punishment of Mum using the children. Further time with dad risks psychological harm to the daughter. And without changes in the environment when a child is 12 they will start to vote with their feet and at this point it is Dad who risks losing the relationship without making changes. Given that the children are articulate, intelligent and clearly gifted, if they goose not to go to a parent’s house when they are 12 the court will not force the contact’.

The 24 months of worry that I would lose my children and my life was lifted during that 40 min judgment.

I had been judged.
My children had been heard and understood and our concerns justified.

There is no greater victory.
The loss that never ends — the loss of a meaningful loving relationships of trust, fairness, unselfishness and courage to give your children what they need — is the ultimate loss. I won the residency order. I won my children’s faith. The only loss I have is respect for their Father. That is the loss that knows no end.

Years later, however, I remain enraged about the performance I had to make to be ‘the exhausted, desperate Mum the judge needs to see’. I resent that my strengths — accuracy, challenging injustice, truthfulness and obstinance — qualities admired as ones of leadership in a man were instructed to be turned down because they are interpreted as non-compliant in a woman. We should speak up when something is not right, when undermining is taking place, when systems, people, Cafcass Officers are corrupt and corruptible. We tell our children to be brave, be bold, be yourself. Then we tell those girls who become women to stop these characteristics and accept the archetypes directed by our own Family Courts and the officials that turn the cogs.

The Cafcass Officer didn’t like my challenges. The psychologist accepted and praised my enquiring mind and described my ex for being fixed and resolute (uncooperative) whilst telling the court I held ‘the key to the resolution of the conflict — by backing down, shutting up, accepting the abuse persistently doled our through gaslighting, stonewalling and intransigence. I could flex and contort to any slight so the abuse could continue unchecked if I wanted residency of my children. Three different judges wanted or saw three different ‘Anna’s’ — one saw a frustrated mum, one only saw a mum with anxiety and hurried me out of his court, one saw why I was ‘challenging’ and that my ability withstand years of abuse and coercive control transacted through my children was attributable to my being bold, brave, myself.

The Barrister did what he had to do to get me the right result for the misogyny of the family court with officers and paid-for experts waiting to point their fingers and say ‘difficult woman, difficult woman’.

Because challenging women challenge them and their infrastructures, assessments and belittling of women.

So I’m here. And I’m ready to fight back for all those women who don’t have my strength or have had their resilience worn away by the family courts. It is time for change.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1129118565876097035

Why does everyone hate the Family Court ? Part Two

I am grateful for Emma Sutcliffe for this guest post. Its been an interesting month for thinking and talking about why the family court seems to inspire such strong and invariably negative feelings. I first wrote about this on January 8th where I shared two narratives from two parents – a mother and a father, both with a very different perspective but united in their fear and distrust of the process they had experienced.

Then I heard Professor Jo Delanhunty QC’s Gresham College talk, wishing the Children Act 1989 its happy 30th Birthday, and her clear and urgent reminder that the ethos of the Act was in serious danger of being undermined by the lack of resources now provided to support what it wanted to do – to recognise the child as the heart of every decision and to enable parents to care safety for their children.

Short on the heels of this, I had to then consider the astonishing allegations of Victoria Haigh; who appears to be developing a presence as a ‘campaigner’ against the family court system without apparent concern or criticism from others in this field and despite the very serious findings made against her about the harm she inflicted on her own child. I can only assume the lack of challenge to her more fantastical assertions stems from the fact that they ‘feel right’ to a lot of people. This is depressing indeed.

So what do we do? I have very little power or influence. But that’s the same for most of us. Acting alone we can achieve little. But if we come together and were prepared to talk – openly and honestly – I want to believe that we could achieve something positive.

So I am very grateful for Emma for sticking with our conversations on line, not always easy for either of us at times, and producing a powerful articulation of how and why her reaction to the family justice system was so negative.

Why do people hate family court?

Emma Sutcliffe

People hate family court for the same reasons they hate hospitals; something pathological has happened to you that you cannot resolve alone and you have to put your life in the hands of people who are deemed to be more expert about your condition than you are. If you’re in family court you’ve likely been through something painful, there’s no guarantee it will stop hurting and the interventions themselves cause bruises. There’s also a hefty bill at the end and the surrounding quality of life direct and indirect costs of loss of earnings and utter exhaustion. Plus … like lots of diseases, it might not go away, it might come back; next time it could be fatal.

Why the determined correlation with medicine? I’m trying to align what I know with what I’ve experienced – knowledge of facts and wisdom of interpretation. I’ve been a medical writer for 25 years following a degree in medical biochemistry and application of that in the research and development of medicines. My entire nature is that of enquiry and fact-based decision making and behaviours. I believe in logic, cause and effect, sensibly following ‘doctor’s orders’.

I’ve also spent too much time in family court as a petitioner which saw 18 hearings in 22 months. My faith in facts, practitioners and the sensibility of court orders was put to the test before, during and after every one of those hearings. It was like preparing for surgery.

Let’s cut to the end result to be able to get back to the original question of ‘hatred’: although technically ‘I won’ — as in the contact order I applied for (on police recommendation) was granted — the experience was like surgery without anaesthetic where you leave feeling as though the presenting diseases may have been excised but fragments of infection are lingering away in septic reservoirs leaving with you a body and mind too reversibly damaged to recover and parent well. ‘Our case’ was just a lose:lose for the entire family. Both families; the old and the new and the penumbrae of families around us.

Our case had its ‘final hearing’ (an oxymoron if you consider that toxic parenting is a chronic condition) more than a year ago. I’m still haunted by the ghosts of hearings past and have my very own reservoir of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder leaving a lasting impression. The reality of the court orders is that unlike doctor’s orders, I’m already forced into breaking them and live every day with the fresh fear that CAFCASS will find me to be in breach and my ex husband will take me back to court. Because family court transacts on what has happened and assumes that children’s needs are fixed. Funnily enough, children grow and change whereas court orders don’t (without another set of injurious hearings reopening wounds) and as I now have a sentient, articulate adolescent determinedly refusing to stay at Dad’s house that essentially turns me into a criminal and opens me up again to allegations of the never-proved, academically derided ‘junk theory’ of parental alienation.

Like Andrew Wakefield’s infamous MMR causal link to autism saw him struck off yet the myths still perpetuate; parental alienation accusations conveniently drown out what ironically is ‘the voice of the child’ – child says ‘this is happening to me; I don’t like it’, CAFCASS officers respond with ‘they’re too young to know what they’re saying, they are the mouthpiece of the parent’. Pick a lane please. By all accounts, therefore, if recent judges’ blunt condemnations that ‘alienating mothers should be subjected to a three-strikes and you’re out’ – or imprisoned – then who knows if my next blog will be about life behind bars?

Therein lies the promulgation to distrust, fear, anger — hatred.

Despite living in purgatory, I have been able to step back and consider what in the hell happened there. My observations are that, like medicine, where a diagnosis, prognosis and treatment is sought through sedulous investigation of symptoms to reach a purely factual outcome – so too does the law of family court (specifically the implementation of ‘The Children’s Act’) rely on facts to achieve a sensible outcome that secures the best outcome for the child. As such, both the practices of medicine and law are ones which rely on its participants and processes being underpinned by integrity and accuracy. Trust should therefore be implicit.

However, neither medicine nor law accommodates human nature and emotions – which when put under pressure will contort and eclipse rational and logical decision-making. When afraid, hurt, confused or distressed the easiest of the emotion to employ is anger. Family court is that A&E part of the hospital where anger dominates; complex decisions are being made amidst a melee of jargon, allegations, process and manipulation. It becomes too easy to archetype ‘all mums are histrionic and cry wolf on domestic abuse’ or ‘all dads are intimidating and claim parental alienation’. However, this isn’t about gender – it is about which parent is the angriest parent in family court because they are more likely to be the one also prepared to be the most ruthless; to take the greatest risks. When parties enter the court they will each know how to attack and defend and how far the other is prepared to go.

The hate of family court is the knowledge that parties will default to their character type and court processes and practitioners by their very need to be thorough and percipient to protect a child have to also be open to the angriest party’s determination to exploit those people and processes in continued pursuit of punishment.

People hate family court because it prolongs the pain of punitive pursuit.

I could further my anecdotes and detail the utterly ludicrous allegations postured at me that I had to defend. But that would be pointless precisely because I was able to defend them thanks to a brilliant barrister and very caring solicitor who, importantly, were able to get me to listen all the while that my anger and fears were raging towards a maelstrom that possibly would have seen me lose custody of my own children and only be permitted supervised visits. If my ex had got his way and the full force of his anger and risk-taking of out and out lies had succeeded in influencing the judge as they biased the CAFCASS officer throughout proceedings then this story might have been very different indeed and even have seen our children placed in the care system. I won’t comment on the allegations because that’s the subject of a different blog (how narcissistic parents behave in court).

But that is why only relying on ‘facts’, denying how emotions can influence behaviours and seeing things in the fixed black/white process of the law is merely sticking a plaster over a seeping wound. People hate family court because it is sterile and doesn’t accurately reflect life outside the chambers. The law is fixed, but life is fluid. And people’s emotions over their children will always spill over … the angrier, the louder, the more heinous the allegations, the blunt threats and brinksmanship of disingenuous practitioners … when faced with the prospect of fight or flight, most mothers without strong legal support will run.

There needs to be allowance for the emotions of all parties and just as a good doctor seeks to help the physical and holistic needs of a patient; so too must family court consider the importance of helping and communicating that it should be a place for resolution rather than fuelling hatred. That can only begin when we seek to align knowledge of facts and wisdom of interpretation.

Why does everyone hate the family courts? And what – if anything – can we do about it?

The is a post by Sarah Phillimore, with a significant contribution by two parents; a mother who nearly ran and a father who has now lost a relationship with his child. I am very grateful to both commentators. In our various exchanges we have at times doubted each other’s good faith but have persevered to try and have a conversation about something important.

In November 2018 I attended a conference in London where it was asserted very clearly by a speaker, with the enthusiastic assent of almost all the (female) audience, that family courts were tools of misogynistic oppression and decisions were routinely made in favour of violent and abusive men who used accusations of ‘parental alienation’ against the mother as a cloak for their own abuse.

In January 2019 I became aware of Ellie Yarrow Sanders who had ‘gone on the run’ with her 3 year old son just before a ‘significant’ court hearing involving his father’s application for contact. The Transparency Project have written about the background to and media attention around this case.

A petition has been organised to allow the mother to ‘tell her story’; already circulating on the internet is a letter purportedly written by the mother about how she felt she had no choice but to flee the father’s abuse. The Women’s Coalition who support the mother, have referred to the Judge in the case lying and ‘distorting evidence’; it is asserted that the appointment of a guardian for the child necessarily means he is going into State care – which is of course, not true.

They comment further

The Women’s Coalition is launching a counterattack to this public lynching of a wonderful mother, just like in the Samantha Baldwin and Rebecca Minnock cases [see link below]. Both cases engendered much public outrage about judges taking children away from loving mothers and giving them to controlling and abusive fathers. Help make this post go viral too!

The difficulty with this analysis of course is that Rebecca Minnock was found to be ‘manipulative, truculent and attention seeking’ and to have caused emotional harm to her son; he no longer lives with her. Samantha Baldwin gave her children drugs and made false allegations against their father.

So what the Woman’s Coallition says no doubt feels very true to them. But has found not be to true on a number of occasions. Of course, no doubt they will say this is due to the (male) Judges who actively hate women or can’t be bothered to educate themselves about the extent and nature of male violence.

On the other side of the debate of course are the groups such as Fathers 4 Justice who will assert that women are no more than hysterical alienators of children and that the family court system bends over backwards to meet their every spiteful demand.

So what is going on? why are the two sides of the discussion so polarised? Why is our public discourse about this so often hysterical and toxic. so unwilling to admit any shades of grey to a narrative of ‘abusive men’ or ‘lying women’.

I had an exchange recently with one visitor to my site ‘John’ who was commenting on my post “Are the Family Courts biased against men?” Our initial exchange was quite dispiriting. We were both rude to each other. However in some post Christmas miracle, we were both able to reflect on our mutual NY resolution to be more mindful of our language on line and John made the following comment which I set out below in full.

I think it is an articulate distillation of the fundamental issues – which I think boil down essentially to pain, fear and distrust. There is little wonder that father and mothers can end up seeing the same situation in radically different ways; their perception and understanding clouded by pain. But equally there is little doubt the the system itself often operates to make things worse. I have commented before and at length as to why I don’t think the court system is ever the best place to attempt to unpick toxic and failing relationships – but it is our only place and it is surely better than deciding a case on the basis of who can gather more ‘likes’ and clicks on social media.

Like John, I now consider the only way to attempt to counter the persistent and dangerous flow of false information, fear and misunderstanding is to open up the family courts to greater public scrutiny.

EDIT Jan 9th – I have now included an account from a mother who gives the other side of the coin. She nearly ran but didn’t as she was lucky enough to find a lawyer who had the time, patience and ability to explain what was going on and help her anxiety. I agree that this is a very important part of the problem – too often I think lawyers make assumptions about what parents understand or worse, don’t even care that much. A necessary survival ability to ‘switch off’ when dealing with human distress and misery on a daily basis, can if left unchecked develop into a callous lack of concern. If parents are finding it so hard to understand what is going on, those of us who are lawyers have to consider more carefully what part we are playing in this.

John’s story

“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty look, repeats his words,
Remembers me of his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form”
Shakespeare – King John

The above sonnet will resonate with many readers since this is what it feels like when you are cut off from your child. I would like to start by remembering that Fathers and Children have feelings, as well as mothers.

I can appreciate, that working daily in the Family court system you must encounter many occasions where people have helped to create or compound the problems they now grapple with. I am sure that the courts also have to deal with lots of cases of genuinely vulnerable, at-risk children. However I feel that it is rather too glib and superficial to maintain that the system is not at fault – it’s the people using it! If I may draw an analogue – if I were to design a car that required an expert driver otherwise you would crash, it would not be an adequate defence to maintain that it was the driver’s own fault that they crashed.

In a similar way, surely it is reasonable to expect a court system to provide maximally just and equitable outcomes. Maximum happiness with flawed material, if you like.

Of course I, and many others, tend to view the Family court system through the prism of their own experiences. It makes objectivity tough. I would also expect that the people who tend to contribute to blogs like this, are those that aren’t happy.

I do feel that an important factor is the secrecy surrounding the family court system and the consequential lack of reporting on, and analysis of decisions. It makes gathering accurate metrics and statistics hard. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence, particularly with the rise of the internet and social media. Social media is not the best platform for a sensible debate.

I mentioned earlier that I read somewhere that the great majority of the time in the UK, the child resides with the mother. I honestly can’t cite the source. But unless we also know how many times that decision was contested, or was it by mutual agreement, and the circumstances, then we don’t have all the facts to formally establish bias (or lack of).

Without facts from careful analysis of hundreds of thousands of cases, we are tempted to fall back on ‘belief’ which is often founded on personal experience or on hearsay that confirms our prejudices.

I recognize that the court has a responsibility to protect the interest of the child. I also feel that the court has a responsibility to ensure that both parents are treated equally justly & fairly.
If we take it true though that the child ends up with the mother most of the time, then I feel that it follows that if the court must protect the child, it must also may, to some extent give greater protection to the parent the child now lives with, which could lead to an unequal treatment of resident v non-resident parent.

Another problem is the adversarial system that promotes conflict. It also provides employment and income to a great many people and there is an awful lot of vested interest in continuing that – and there has been for hundreds of years.

Anecdotally, many ‘resident parents’ knowingly engage in false accusations of abuse or in behaviour directed towards parental alienation as a means of exacting revenge against their ex-partner. They are assisted by lawyers who have a vested interest in promoting conflict.

There do not seem to be many instances where that behaviour is punished and reported on. The one I recall reported was a case from 2004. Interference with visitation and blocking of access has certainly been my personal experience. Am I the exception or the rule? Hard to say without statistics.

In my own case, I was disgusted to discover that the court seemed far more willing to accept my ex-wife’s word that I was ‘abusive’, despite their being no evidence, than they were to accept my word that she was interfering with visitation or engaging in alienating behaviour. I can understand why – it’s a lot safer and easier to prevent a dad seeing his kid ‘because he might be abusive’. But for those dads who have honestly done nothing wrong, it can feel like an uphill struggle.

As I alluded to before, the fact that these important decisions are not made by jury, but by a single human being, also is not helpful. I would imagine that the cases are often influenced by reports from social workers, agencies and so forth who are not subject to independent scrutiny.

In an ideal world there would be no divorce. Perhaps co-parenting after divorce just simply does not work.

Sigh. I don’t know. I didn’t file for my divorce, I didn’t ask to lose my child and I didn’t ever abuse my ex-wife in any way. It makes me very sad and occasionally bitter and angry that I have been an unwilling part of a process which I was powerless to stop.

In the end, it is the child that suffers most. I have been forced to move on. There is no point in spending my entire life fighting a battle I cannot win.

I have another child and I can cope with the loss of the first at great personal sorrow.
However my son can never have another father.

The mother’s story – she wanted to run but didn’t

It’s been some years since my decision not to run. I have met and instructed several lawyers since then but not all made me feel like a person and less like a process. This is an important factor in understanding why someone might not be able to trust their lawyer and feel they have no option but to run and we need to talk about this, as it goes hand in hand with misinformation about the family courts.

The law is there to protect but, all too often, a lawyer is seen as working a system instead of working for their client. This is a myth the law needs to work much harder to put right or more people, like Ellie, will feel they have no option but to run.

Although I rarely liked what my lawyer said, I learned to trust that she was working for the best outcome. It wasn’t an automatic trust. She translated the convoluted legalese into language that my permanently fearful self was better able to digest. She deconstructed the law and made it less intimidating, which was key. She understood my irrational fear of social workers yet she did not dismiss it but helped me to see what their role really was instead of the role I had assigned to them in my head of the Childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

My lawyer remained patient and continually kept me informed every single step of the way, allowing me to process what I didn’t understand, often explaining on a loop. She understood that my exhausted body was permanently flooded with adrenaline, geared for threat and very, very bad at assimilating complex information so she would frequently offer a HUGE dose of calming perspective whenever something had upset me. Before each hearing, she would meet me in a café, so I would not have to go into court on my own. I believed my lawyer would fight my corner.

But what made me want to run? Things changed with pregnancy. It had started subtly enough. I found it difficult to breastfeed. He stood behind me and watched like a hawk- criticising at any given moment. It started when he told me my breast milk was inferior. That I was starving the baby. That the baby was better off having formula because you could see the ingredients on the packet. He was attentive and charming around the Health Visitors but once they had gone, he monitored everything I did, telling me I was useless because I couldn’t get the baby to sleep through the night, I couldn’t keep the house clean, I couldn’t do the most basic things that most new mothers found second nature. My struggles with parenting a newborn, the difficulties with breast feeding, baby blues and exhaustion were all cited as reasons for just how crap I was. I wasn’t a proper mother. Constant digs that I wasn’t coping with what should come naturally for a mother, led to him suggesting that if he didn’t support me, my baby would be taken from me . He told me he would prevent that from happening because he wanted my baby to have a relationship with me – even if I wasn’t a very good mother. I was at rock bottom and believed him, spiralling into an ever increasing mass of inadequacy.

He told me that I was disgusting, that I was no longer attractive and he was doing me a favour by staying with me because on my own, I would end up begging on Oxford Street. It never stopped and I started to believe that the only thing I could do, to keep my child with me, was to get away from a system that seemed hell bent on separating us.

I was too scared to speak to my GP, fearful it might set the child removal wheels in motion. In fact, I was terrified of anyone whose job it was to support and I have heard many women share the exact same fears.
I remember how grateful I was, that he would allow me the chance to be a mother!

I say all this because it worries me that people aren’t getting the help they need. I worry about Ellie and hope she has a lawyer who will take the trouble to understand her reasons for doing what she did and not demonise her.
I hope she has a judge who will understand why a mother might run and who can acknowledge that decisions like this won’t have come easily. I hope the judge asks what made her take the risk? What was going through her mind? What had she been told? What kind of support did she have around her? Which professionals could she trust? What was her relationship like with her lawyer? What was her greatest fear?
All of this even before considering whether her ex was abusive or not.

I don’t believe that many lawyers and judges are fully cognisant of just how imposing and intimidating court can be and how, when faced with the prospect of genuinely believing your child will be removed, how someone might see that their only option was to run.

For a person to have faith in the legal process and the court, the court needs to work harder to show that that faith has been earned and I cannot, hand on heart, say that it has.