President of the Family Division James Munby has reminded the government that children who wish to speak to judges about their wishes and feelings during a case should be able to do so, in his latest update on the Family Court.
The reminder comes after Researching Reform published its Freedom Of Information Request asking the Ministry of Justice on an update in this area.
In the 16th View From The President’s Chambers, Munby adds a quote from Minister for Victims, Youth and Family Justice, Dr Lee as a gentle nudge. Dr Lee says:
“Guidance on children’s participation in proceedings is key to the voice of the child agenda. It is vital that we get this right, so the judiciary, Cafcass and Ministry of Justice are working carefully on this. We need to explore ways to balance children’s stronger involvement in proceedings about them, while also making sure the system continues to operate effectively at this time of increasing demand and pressure. We will, of course, listen to your views in getting that balance right.”
The government’s very slow progress in this area is partly to do with high level anxiety over involving children in proceedings. However, any policy that’s implemented must stress that involvement is voluntary and where requested, facilitated quickly and safely.
Anxiety should not be a factor in the government dragging its heels over this issue – if children wish to speak, they will not feel duress or fear and should expect that if they are being coerced into seeing the judge, professionals working with the family should be able to spot this and protect the child in question without opening them up to any harm.
Current guidelines being used to allow children to speak with judges can be found here.
Researching Reform expects a response to its FOI request at the beginning of February. We’ll keep you posted.
Researching Reform 
Unfortunately in every one of the several cases I have been involved in where the judge spoke direct to the children the same scenario was repeated .The parents were excluded (and not even allowed to listen from an adjoining room) then the child was interviewed by the judge while dominated by the threatening presence of a social worker and /or guardian and sometimes a Cafcass official as well !
Intimidated and surrounded the poor child inevitably trotted out the well rehearsed statement concocted by the “SS” ……….
How biased can a court be??
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Oh dear.
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It’s sad to see this extreme effort going in without seeing the real problem: the family court is not the ideal arena for fact finding and judges simply are not trained to either interview children or evaluate what member of a family is telling the truth. The research never mentioned is that which shows 90% of domestic violence allegations used in family courts are unsubstantiated and many are false.
The tragedy is that serial abuse of the courts by pathological parents ruins it for those who are genuine victims.
More legal aid won’t solve this as it’s often the lawyers who wind up the combativeness in litigation and the only way to make a profit from legal aid rates is to draw out proceedings. There is an obvious clash between truth and corporate interests.
What they should center on is not how to cater for alleged victims but cater for both sides. By catering for alleged victims the other side, who may be perfectly innocent and often are, is burdened with court delays and processes they do not deserve. Children suffer immeasurably due to delays and the poor degrees of parenting time they have with the parent under scrutiny.
The only way to cater for both sides is to get serious about finding the truth. The current system does not do it, and never will, regardless of how much they tinker with it. Truth finding covers not only alleged acts of DV but whether children are telling the truth.
Judges in Germany have over 100 hours of forensic interview training before they are allowed in court to question children. Ours have no such thing, and they don’t want to do it. They do not wish to specialise in family law, that proposal was rejected by judges during the Family Justice Review. So we have judges who are not specialists with no forensic training making decisions based on their own perceptions, not the truth. The same goes for DV and any other ‘findings of fact’ in family courts.
Technology now exists that identifies lying with far greater accuracy than the supposed balance of probabilities. It’s used by the UK government and police and probably most security agencies worldwide. It does not work with sociopaths, such as some of those who make false allegations, but remember results could be verified by testing both parents and a child. The costs of these tests are coming down.
It should seem obvious that every time there is a proposed change the solution always seems to be one of providing family professionals with more money and more work. The problem of alleged abusers cross examining alleged victims existed when legal aid was easier to obtain, now they advocate for this retrograde step in claiming it will solve the issue without providing any evidence. In common with everything else in family law, it runs on whatever assumptions are preferred, not fact. The only truth here is that corporate interests are best served by trying to keep things as they are, and present the pretence that systemic flaws can be patched up by throwing more money at a supposed problem.
All that needs to be done is for Women’s Aid to recycle a false report such as the 19 homicides report, that has already been discredited, and give it to a new Minister who frankly, knows little about family law, or why it does not work. Being the head of the FJC is not a qualification in family law, as it was previously held by a pensions expert. Oliver Heald was not a family lawyer.
The solution is either to use the available technology to ascertain likely truths or invest in forensic interview training that scores about 70% accuracy, again as used by most police forces. To keep throwing work and more money at the same untrained people will only cause children and genuine victims more pain.
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This is a hydra-like problem with many heads all screaming to be heard. The smallest head, that of the child, probably encounters the greatest problem, that of getting heard at all.
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Every week Enough Abuse hears from those who have felt bitterly let down by judges in Family courts. MANY occasions have occurred where remarkably, UNsupervised access has been granted to an alleged abuser/parent. The family courts are shrouded in secrecy and themselves need an overhaul. The truth is the truth, and should NOT based on balance of probability of a Judge and others who are untrained. The very systems set to protect children in fact do the contrary in far too many cases. I agree with much of what has been written by ionsb65 in the above reply. For a long time I have felt there are far more reliable ways to gain the truth, but a sociopath will evade the truth and mechanisms in place to achieve it . A child’s life is highly precious and forensic interview training should be made available. Children under 7 yrs old CANNOT invent child abuse their brain has not sufficiently developed at that age , therefore they have either seen it, or experienced it. Surely this is evidence !
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Reblogged this on Musings of a Penpusher and commented:
This is a hydra-like problem; many heads screaming to be heard, but it is the smallest head, that of the child, which encounters the greatest problem in getting heard.
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My daughter was never allowed to speak in court although she asked to. She was 11yrs at the time. She is still traumatised, triggered & broken by a court order that made her visit my abuser and witness more nonsense & unsavoury behaviours with his girlfriend and drugs until I broke the order from the courts and said “no more”. Family courts should hang their heads with shame. No protection of the child and no “child comes first”. It’s a disgrace. And archaic that there is no formal training for judges. For Gods sake get a grip on the 21st century. Every child matters and should be heard. The greatest gift anyone can give a victim of abuse is to be believed.
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Judges talking to children misses the point completely – such an approach is condescending and insulting. Children and young people should have the right in law to appoint and instruct their own legal or lay counsel and to be a party to the proceedings, if they wish to do so. It is their future lives that a being decided, not just their childhood. Who they live with and where they live, and how they can relate to their friends, and engage in leisure, recreational, and sporting activities as they may choose, are immensely important to most children, yet are rarely considered.
In family matters between separated parents, children and young people should have the opportunity to submit their evidence of events and/or their wishes and feelings on their future living arrangements in a Sworn Statement/affidavit, or give direct testimony by video conferencing, or to be present in the Court room – it should be their choice.
In Australia the Family Law allows children to bring an application to the Family Court for a Parenting Order, and the Family Court Rules allow either party to the proceedings, to join any other party to the proceedings, including children and young people. Yet there is no traceable occasion in the last 25 years that a child or young person has been allowed into a Family Court room. The last traceable occasion was in 1991 (Pagliarella) which incidentally and ironically was the year in which Australia ratified and signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It is deeply concerning that the time factor has become the major excuse for not including children and young people into Family Court proceedings i.e. “while also making sure the system continues to operate effectively at this time of increasing demand and pressure”. To children time is of the essence, it is the rest of their lives which are at stake and which so often are damaged and destroyed by rushed, inadequate, inappropriate, and ill-advised decisions.
I suspect that the judiciary and the legal profession oppose children being in Courts because they do not have the requisite knowledge and skills to speak with children and fear embarrassment if they are called upon to do so, and some also fear that children will bring truth to the courtroom to intercede in the deceits and misrepresentations carried out by adults.
Finally on the subject of false allegations of domestic violence and child abuse made to Family Courts in marital disputes, the research overwhelmingly shows that false allegations are extremely rare, with an average in such research of approximately 9% of such allegations being false. Of those false allegations, 55% were found to have been made by fathers, and 45% by mothers. e.g. Monash University et al.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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This sounds like a good idea but we have to be mindful that the possibility of a child wishing to tell their views to a judge is most likely going to be determined by the professionals working with the child. if any of these people are up to no good then the childs true feelings and wishes may never become know. especially in cases where children have been unlawfully kept away from their parents with a pack of lies being told to the child and the parents by S/workers.
its called Severing ties and its very likely widespread across the country. this is where organizations such as NYAS need to have more access to children caught up in care proceedings to make shure they have a voice. we have not seen or heard from our 8 yr old son in two yrs and NYAS were denied access to him. obviously they dont want him talking to anyone outside the SS circle.
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