Tag Archives: Family Inquiry

Feelings and Dogma cannot set the agenda in Family Justice

Sarah Phillimore: I am grateful to FNF for this guest post. While I do not always agree with what this group says or how they frame it, they at least make the effort to explain and evidence their assertions, for which I am grateful. I certainly prefer their approach to the polarising and unevidenced assertions that this discussion appears to encourage from many on ‘both sides’. I remain convinced that the only respectable conclusion the Inquiry can reach is the urgent need for reliable data. Otherwise it seems we will be doomed to spin this wheel for many more years to come.

The Response of Families Need Fathers to the Family Inquiry Panel

Families Need Fathers @FNF_Media www.fnf.org.uk ‘Families need Fathers – because both parents matter’ is a UK charity founded in 1974 to support the welfare interests of children when families separate, with a focus on parents struggling to secure reasonable or indeed any parenting time, in the absence of good reasons. We believe that the best interests of children would be served if there were a rebuttable presumption of shared care. We aspire to a situation where most children enjoy joint care of their separated parents the benefits of which are supported by research where such arrangements are the norm.

Examples of conflict from our front row FNF speak to tens of thousands of parents a year who come to us for help. We also receive feedback from many lawyers, McKenzie Friends and litigants of their experiences. So here is a cross-section of the kinds of scenarios that we see.

  • After separation, all was working well. When mother got a new boyfriend, all contact stopped.
  • When father got a new girlfriend, mum first insisted that he could not have the children in her presence and stopped contact. When he took her to court, she alleged inappropriate, sexualised behaviour in front of the child.
  • When dad lost his job and reduced child maintenance, mum said “no money, no kids”.
  • When dad had a job and paid child maintenance, mum said “more money, or no kids”.
  • Mum refused to put dad on the birth certificate and threatens no contact, so dad applies for Parental Responsibility.
  • Mum beat dad regularly, when be plucked up the courage to tell the police, she alleged sexual abuse.
  • She found out he’d had an affair then phoned the police alleging abuse to get him out of the house.
  • She slapped him repeatedly in an intense argument. When he pushed her away she phoned the police.
  • He said he would leave, but she threatened him with not seeing the children.
  • Both parents were aggressive to each other when drinking.
  • Both smoked cannabis, but upon separation mum claimed he was the only one who did it in front of the child.
  • He was an alcoholic. There was a violent incident where he hit mum many years ago whilst drunk. He’s been dry since then and the main carer of the child, but now she has applied for legal aid on the basis of this incident.
  • Separated father reported the mother to social services when a drug dealer moved in with her and the children. She assaulted him when he came to collect the kids, called the police and claimed he’d carried out the assault.
  • Mum suffers from a mental health conditions that cause her difficulty in seeing things with clarity. Or, mum has been the victim of a horrendous abuse herself causing her to feel fearful in situations where she would not have otherwise.

All these of incidents could have happened with parents’ roles reversed of course. All form part of the varied situations that family court judges have to deal with. In each, there will be two sides to the story with varying degrees of supporting evidence. It is the role of the judge to (a) decide whether the facts of each of the claims being made are relevant to the safety of the child and (b) weigh-up the evidence and decide which is more credible when evaluating the risks.

The ‘paramountcy principle’ means that their decision has to be based on the best interests of the child taking into account identified risks from each parent. Charlotte Proudman, in her Guest Post of 3rd July 2019 for the Transparency Project makes a range of suggestions as to what is wrong with family justice (and there is much that is). However, her assertions appear to be based, at best on her experience of being a self-proclaimed ‘feminist barrister’ (and hence unlikely to see a typical cross-section of cases) and at worst on dogma.

Claims, for example, that the majority of cases stem from safeguarding concerns relating to family abuse are precisely what it is the judge’s job to decide based on evidence. Both sides are likely to make such assertions. Similarly, claims that Cafcass documenting of allegations of father’s controlling behaviour being discarded are also problematic. If a judge ignores a report in which there are concerns, that would be a basis for appeal. A judge may well dismiss the allegation because the evidence provided by the father was stronger than that offered by the mother, perhaps compelling. It could be that there was evidence of the mother or both parents exercising inappropriate controlling behaviour over the other, the nature of which (a) was unlikely to manifest itself now they don’t live together or (b) is insufficient to warrant placing the child into care.

The current move is to ‘ban abusers from having contact with their children’.

The definition of domestic abuse has been broadened recently. It includes shouting and

aggressive behaviour so the other parent is frightened. Such behaviour is fairly common by both parents who find reason to find fault in each other prior to or in the throes of separation. If that were the ‘abuse’ that has taken place, one would hope that nobody would suggest that neither, or either parent, should be stopped from parenting the child.

However, few studies have gone so far as far as to determine how many of these allegations were found to be irrelevant to the matter before the court, how many involved mutually inappropriate behaviour and how many had findings to support the allegation or that they were unfounded/fabricated. One relatively small-scale one by Professor Tommy Mackay at Strathclyde University concluded that as many as 70% of cases were found to be false or unfounded. Founder of Women’s Aid, Erin Pizzey, reported that more than half of women in the refuge she ran were in mutually abusive relationships and sometimes behaved worse than the men. We would hope that those who claim that false allegations are rare might support our call for truly independent research on a larger-scale into the prevalence and nature of false allegations and exaggerations in the context of Children Act disputes.

For now, one thing we do know is that Professor Liz Trinder, of Exeter University, carried our research that assisted the Government in its decision to table the ‘No-Fault Divorce’ Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The report quotes a range of authoritative sources e.g. The Law Commission saying that the ‘system still allows, even encourages, the parties to lie, or at least to exaggerate, in order to get what they want’. Does anyone suppose that when emotions are raw, people are angry, feel jealous and hurt, and stakes high (access and parenting time) that the propensity to lie and exaggerate might be any less?

If we then add to this cocktail that since 2013, when LASPO was introduced, a condition of qualification for Legal Aid in private family disputes was the making of allegations of domestic abuse. Whilst the majority of such claims are likely to be genuine, a significant proportion – that we estimate in thousands per year, are obtained on the basis of false allegations and exaggerations – on issues that do not then even feature in subsequent proceedings.

The statistics imply this. The growth of complaints of this amongst our service users supports this and we are now hearing of this increasingly from the judiciary too. The former President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, said “One of the greatest vices of our system… is the unfounded allegation which festers around and poisons the process”. He should know!

Parental Alienation

Interviewed on the Victoria Derbyshire Show on 15th May 2019, Charlotte Proudman spoke of a view that “women lie” and that Parental Alienation being a “new term” that “really turns my stomach”. In her article, she suggests there is ‘scant scientific research’ into it. Except, firstly, nobody is suggesting that only women lie. Men and women can and do and it is up to the court to determine whether and who is lying. Secondly, Parental Alienation has been recognised under those terms since the ‘80s (as well as studied earlier). Thirdly, bad-mouthing and the many other behaviours that form part of what is now known as parental alienation existed well before the term was coined and were every bit as damaging. Fourthly, there is a significant and growing body of research into it and the World Health Organisation, (WHO), who don’t take decisions lightly, has just recognised it too. Whatever the research, one hopes that it is not too contentious to say that parents who enmesh the children in their feelings and paint their other parent as a monster are not putting their children’s needs first. They are doing harm to their own children that is certainly equivalent to other forms of child abuse. That, and all forms of abuse, should be a concern for all of us to jointly develop solutions for. To deny parental alienation and alienating behaviours is a danger to children.

As we are not saying that all women lie any more than all men do, neither should it be surprising that parents who are accused of abuse might seek to use parental alienation as a form of defence. The role of the court, however, has to be to use evidence to distinguish between the different causes of a child’s rejection of a parent, including undue influence by the other. A dogmatic failure to consider this possibility would in fact leave the child at risk of ongoing abuse that will damage them for life.

The reality of some 6,000 applications being made each year for enforcement of Child Arrangement Orders that have not been complied with tells its own story. As does the fact that courts often give up in these situations and make orders for Indirect Contact only i.e. sending cards, letters and gifts (see article in Family Law).

Prevalence of Abuse and How to Make Progress

At FNF we note that there are men who are perpetrators of horrendous abuse, just as there are women who do so. Ministry of Justice data reports that around two-thirds of domestic abuse (65%) is against women and a third (35%) against men (695,000). We might also argue that there is evidence of more men under-reporting. The point is, whatever the precise figures, every victim who is being harmed deserves to be supported by the courts and other services. So does every victim of false allegations – the latter do tremendous harm too. We need to create a culture that drives out all forms of abuse against everyone. It will happen when we all seek to understand each other’s problems and reach out for balanced facts and research. That is less likely to happen if those whose voices dominate the discussions on domestic violence continue to seek to make this into a gendered debate. A divisive approach seems unlikely to succeed and real progress will happen when men support women who are victims and vice versa.

Review of Protection in Family Justice May 2019 saw the culmination of an organised, effective lobby from a number of women’s rights activists and organisations seeking a review of family justice based on a narrative suggesting that family courts are granting ‘contact at all costs’, resulting in dangerous men having unsupervised contact. This is patent rubbish. At that time 123 MPs were persuaded to sign a call for an independent inquiry into this frightful alleged occurrence. An entire one hour Victoria Derbyshire Show was dedicated to this ‘scandal’ and subsequent shows continued to address this narrative. The ‘research’ carried out by the show found four cases in the last four years where a father had killed a child whilst on contact. The problem was that it was selective and did not look at children killed by mothers – of which, sadly, there are many.

As if to highlight this point, only last week a Serious Case Review was published following the murder of a five-year-old boy, whilst on contact with his narcissistic mother on Father’s Day. She left a note to say ‘If I can’t have Leo then nobody is going to’. One of the recommendations of the report was:

‘That Kent Safeguarding Children Board and the Kent and Medway Domestic Abuse Executive Group develop an increased understanding of the needs of men as victims of domestic abuse and what this means about the nature of services that should be provided for them.’

If we are to make the world safer for children and adults alike, it will not be achieved by men and women working against each other, but in seeking to understand the underlying issues without being led by feelings, ideology and dogma. The Government rejected an independent inquiry, but did announce a more limited review. The need to create trust amongst both men and women remains. The current make-up of the review panel is 10 women and one man. It includes a representative of Women’s Aid and not one representative of men’s or fathers’ organisations or those with experience of false allegations. Consequent recommendations will affect fathers, mothers, and children including, in all probability, those where there are no domestic abuse considerations.

In summary – there is a desperate need for a review of family justice, but this narrow, gendered exercise with a very unrepresentative panel is not the right approach.

Judges don’t need ‘training’ about violence – they need evidence.

This is a post by Sarah Phillimore

Response of the CPR to the Family Inquiry into the courts response to domestic violence

I have commented critically on the nature of the Inquiry and the response of some such as Charlotte Proudman to what necessitates such an Inquiry – making the reasonable point that serious allegations require some kind of evidence.

I confess that I missed the initial call by a group of family lawyers into an independent review of how domestic abuse is treated in the family courts – reported here in Family Law Week on 29th May 2019 and here in the Guardian. 

What happens when the starting point is ‘victim’?

The letter from the lawyers group is a detailed and clearly articulated statement of case that makes many good points.  They say

There is no data collected about the implementation of Practice Direction 12J but anecdotal evidence suggests, as remarked by Lord Justice Munby in 2016, that there are very real concerns about its application in practice at different levels of the judiciary and across the country.

This echoes the points made by Dr Proudman in her post for The Transparency Project. I commented that her experience did not reflect mine, nor that of the other family lawyers who commented via Twitter. We clearly see here the dangers of relying on one person’s subjective experience over anothers – as the tiresome but accurate cliche has it ‘anecdotes are not data’.

But there is something interesting going on. The group states:

We can say from our experience that Practice Direction 12J is often ignored or ‘nodded through’ without any proper risk assessment, leaving women and children vulnerable. Where a fact-finding hearing is listed, the victim is increasingly being told to limit the number of allegations that can be considered by the judge, meaning that there is not a full forensic and expert assessment of the risks. The impact of coercive control, emotional abuse, economic abuse and other forms of non- physical violence are routinely overlooked.

And its there in that use of the word ‘victim’. Clearly if your starting point is that anyone who makes an allegation of abuse is in fact a victim of that abuse then you are going to take a very different and probably negative view of a judge who takes another approach – as indeed every judge must. To deal with any family case on the basis that one party’s allegations are accepted as fact prior to any attempt to hear evidence about contested allegations is simply a denial of justice. It is wrong. Advising police, for example, that they must commence their investigations by ‘believing the victim’ has been rightly decried by the Henriques Report and caused much human misery and massive waste of public money.

The fact that anyone who alleges abuse is automatically a victim is embedded in the recommendations

A domestic abuse coordinator in each court appointed in order to specifically ensure that victims going through the court process are properly protected and all necessary measures are in place, to try to minimise the risk of further abuse through the court process.

And this is a real problem. It is my very clear experience, arising I accept from 20 years experience, not robust peer reviewed research, that while out and out lies made by women about abuse suffered are rare, exaggeration and re-stating history are very commonplace.  Unkindness, cruelty, blinkered thinking, denial etc etc are qualities that I am afraid are demonstrated equally by men and women. I do not doubt that violence in relationships is a real and serious problem and I do not doubt that the majority of physical violence is perpetrated by men against women. But emotional abuse, ‘gas lighting’, unreasonable behaviour are common to both sexes.

Many of my cases chart a drearily predictable course. I will represent a woman who makes a large number of allegations, often over many years. There will be nothing by way of corroboration from either the police or the medical profession. There will be nothing by way of statements from family or friends. The relationship with the father has utterly broken down; often he will contribute to this by behaviour which can be measured objectively as selfish and unkind. But when the allegations encompass drugging, rape, serious physical violence and there is literally nothing before the court but the assertion of the ‘victim’ that this is is so – what do the lawyers or indeed anyone expect the courts to be able to do with all this?

The group make the following suggestion for reform:

Training for the judiciary to better understand domestic abuse, particularly the nuances and subtleties of abuse such as gas lighting, coercive control, and financial abuse especially apparent when hidden by a polite, non-threatening perpetrator. Input from psychologists in this regard is key.

To which I make the following reply. Judges don’t need ‘training’ to know what violence is. They live in the world. They know what violence is. What they need is evidence on which to base decisions. The family justice system simply is not set up to offer inquisitorial tribunals to unpick relationships that may span decades and involve considerable amounts of ‘nuances and subtleties’.

 

Conclusions – we need the data

This polarisation of the debate into women = victim and men = perpetrator and everything must then stem from that, has done real harm. We can see this in the actiivities of such groups as Fathers 4 Justice. it is easy to dismiss them as posturing idiots but the anger they feel didn’t come from no where.  To simply remove men from the debate – as the Panel membership appears to do, Mr Justice Cobb as the lone exception – is to fuel this kind of anger and distrust to the detriment of us all.

It is a great shame as I agree with and think very sensible many of the recommendations made by the group of lawyers. Removal of legal aid has caused enormous problems. Findings of fact need to be held far more often and far earlier. But I don’t accept the problems in the system are due to ‘lack of understanding’ from judges about issues of violence. They stem more from the very clear understanding by judges of their duties to the Rule of Law and procedural fairness. These are concepts vital to any society worth living in.

The real problem for the FJS is that our judges do not have the infra structure to support them to make speedy and robust decisions.  I accept that cases drag on and there is little by way of support either during or after the court process.

However, without establishing a firm factual foundation for investigation, any proposed ‘three month’ inquiry into all of this is clearly doomed. Because we just do not have a consensus about what is really going on. Groups support women will say false allegations of abuse are very rare, groups supporting men say entirely the opposite. Just what is the evidence about the rate of false allegations and how do we find this data?

The group of lawyers say, rightly:

There is no data collected about the implementation of Practice Direction 12J but anecdotal evidence suggests, as remarked by Lord Justice Munby in 2016, that there are very real concerns about its application in practice at different levels of the judiciary and across the country.

What the group of lawyers recommend and I heartily endorse is this:

that robust recording of decision making is made by the Judge, and collated by an appointed court recording officer so that we can begin to assess the scale of the problem and so understand how we must deal with it.

This will be the only recommendation of the Family Inquiry that will make any sense at all.  In my view.  Nothing will change unless it can be identified and faced.

 

The woeful state of our debate; when facts just don’t matter anymore

This is a post by Sarah Phillimore

I feel like I am caught on a constant hamster wheel of the same problems and the same criticisms. Nothing seems to change or get any better. Rather, it gets much, much worse as now we see actual Government departments being drawn into an Inquiry on what I fear is a false premise.

So what’s the latest update at the coal face of the dispiriting Mine of Fact lite Narrative?

I have written before about my disquiet over the narrative that appears to be gaining traction in the ‘debate’ about the Family Justice System (FJS). The influence of those pushing the notion that the FJS exists as a tool of misogynistic oppression, and that judges are simply ignorant or uncaring around issues of violence and abuse, has apparently been taken up wholesale by the Ministry of Justice with its 3 month ‘Inquiry’ recently announced. I have also written about this in critical terms; pointing that 3 months is barely long enough to arrange the first meeting and decide the terms of reference.

However, I was initially hearted to see the MP Louise Haigh, one of those who had pressed for the Inquiry, apparently acknowledge via Twitter the true scope of the difficulties.

Cuts to legal aid and soaring complex caseloads for dedicated social workers are all part of a family courts system under incredible pressure,” she wrote. “There needs to be the political will and resource to fix the structural problems in order to keep our children safe.”

However, this optimism was short lived. It soon became clear that the Panel chosen to undertake this Inquiry came from a narrow group and arguably fails to reflect the sheer weight of the competing perspectives and issues that come together to challenge our FJS.

The Ministry of Justice said this about the Panel on May 21st

The three-month project aims to ensure that the family court works first and foremost in the explicit interests of the child, such as their safety, health and well-being. The MOJ-chaired panel will consist of a range of experts including senior members of the judiciary, leading academics and charities.

And – rather worryingly, as the MoJ are apparently silent about how they are going to ‘fact check’ or reassure themselves of the credibility of any complainants:

A public call for evidence will also be launched imminently and will look to those with direct involvement to share their experiences.

The panel was then announced as

  • Melissa Case & Nicola Hewer, Director of Family and Criminal Justice Policy, MOJ (Chair)
  • Professor Liz Trinder, University of Exeter
  • Professor Rosemary Hunter FAcSS, University of Kent
  • Professor Mandy Burton, University of Leicester
  • Mr Justice Stephen Cobb, Judiciary
  • District Judge Katherine Suh, Judiciary
  • Nicki Norman, Acting Co-Chief Executive, Women’s Aid
  • Dierdre Fottrell QC & Lorraine Cavanagh QC (joint representatives), Association of Lawyers for Children
  • Isabelle Trowler, Chief Social Worker for England (Children & Families)

The panel will also be supported by analysts, researchers and relevant policy officials from MOJ.

This is a list of the great and good indeed. But what is immediately apparent is that it contains only one man – Mr Justice Cobb. Women’s Aid get a representative but no charity or organisation that exists to support men within the system is represented. How is this right? How does this encourage faith in the Inquiry to look with the necessary impartiality at the various issues that bedevil the system? Women’s Aid for example have been shown repeatedly to present unhelpful and inaccurate information in pursuit of their agenda.

Why wasn’t a group such as Families Need Fathers approached (I asked them; they weren’t). The dangers of approaching a problem from one perspective only should not really need pointing out. I have already commented about my real unease that women such as Victoria Haigh are being promoted and supported by  ‘those prominent in the domestic violence sector’.  This is not a men versus women issue – both sexes are capable of horrible cruelty and unkindness towards each other and their children. This has to be recognised and accepted before it can be dealt with.

My misery increased when I read a guest post published by the Transparency Project by barrister Charlotte Proudman. It was a piece published without comment or context – simply saying that ‘other pieces were in the pipeline’. I commented directly that I thought this was irresponsible given that Ms Proudman appeared to be making some very serious assertions about the failings of the judiciary to deal properly or at all with issues of domestic violence in the FJS and yet provided nothing by way of any evidence to support these  worrying claims – that did not chime with any of the barristers who commented via social media.

Nor was unease confined to the lawyers.

 

No one gets a free pass

I am glad to see the Transparency Project published a response on 6th July to the unease that this post generated, but remain sorry that such comment was not made at the time. To publish initially Ms Proudman’s post, without comment or context, that made such frankly incredible claims, risks appearing like endorsement.

I am also concerned to see it said by the Transparency Project in their response that people objected to the post because they didn’t ‘like’ what was said or were using their own anecdotal experience as somehow superior to Ms Proudman’s.

My concerns are not about shutting up people who don’t agree with me. But if people are making incredible assertions, that chime not at all with my experience, then I do not think it is unreasonable to ask that the person making the assertion support it with some evidence and that their views not simply be published without comment or context.

This is far too important an area to be decided by any individual’s ‘feelings’ or inherent prejudice or assumptions. I am glad that the Transparency Project does not wish to ‘play it safe’ and will continue to publish a variety of views – but no one should get a free pass about the need for evidence.

I remember hearing Dan Levitin, author of ‘A field Guide to Lies’  speak at the Bristol Festival of Ideas in 2017. He told us we have a moral obligation to check our assumptions and challenge our colleagues. I wrote then and believe still:

The key message from Dan Levitin was that we must ALL take personal responsibility for educating ourselves to think critically and challenge people that we know are pushing misinformation. We cannot discuss issues sensibly or at all unless we are able to agree on what the ‘facts’ are. There are no ‘alternative facts’ only ‘facts’. But peoples’ beliefs about what is or is not a fact can shift over time.

The consequences of the degraded respect for ‘facts’ and ‘experts’ are all around us. Challenges to the FJS need to be based on proper data, properly analysed. The consequences if it is not are very serious. I am afraid the constitution of the Panel for the Inquiry and the continued promotion of incredible assertions on no evidence, gives me very little confidence that one inherently skewed narrative is going to be challenged sufficiently or at all.

But we shall see. I hope I am wrong.