Welcome to another week.
Figures recently obtained from the Ministry of Justice confirm that there has been a sharp rise in the number of domestic abuse victims seeking non molestation orders through the family courts. It has been suggested that victims are turning to the court system because police are failing to enforce the law.
Ministry of Justice data has revealed that the number of non-molestation orders granted last year was 25,707, indicating an increase of almost 10% since 2016. The number of orders issued also represents the highest for a decade.
The government is now being pressured by campaigners to pay for police training, rather than pass the financial burden on to police forces who are already struggling as a result of budget cuts and mounting work loads.
Victims of domestic violence can apply for an injunction, or non molestation order, through the courts, to protect themselves and their children from an abuser. The injunction can also be used to decide who lives in the family home and who can enter surrounding areas, and is called an occupation order. The person named in the injunction can be arrested if they break either of these orders.
Applying for an order is free.
In order to apply for either or both of these orders, you will need to:
- See if you’re eligible to apply first
- Download and fill out form FL401, and then make two copies
- Write your witness statement explaining to the court what has happened, and ask for the relevant order.
- At the bottom of your witness statement you will need to write a statement of truth. The following words can be used: “I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.” Then sign and date the statement.
- IMPORTANT: If you would like to keep your child’s and your address and telephone private, then fill out form C8 along with form FL401
- Send your forms to a court which deals with domestic violence cases. You can find your nearest court-house here.
EMERGENCY ORDERS
If you or your child are facing an immediate threat of harm, you can ask for an emergency order. This can be done using your form FL401, by ticking the box in Section 3 (The Order/s For Which You Are Applying), which reads:
Tick this box if you wish the court to hear your application without notice being given to the respondent. The reasons relied on for an application being heard without notice must be stated in the statement in support.
This process is called a ‘without notice’ or ‘ex-parte’ application, as you don’t have to tell the person you want protection from, that you’re applying for the emergency order. Inside the form, explain why you need an emergency order. This kind of order usually lasts until you go to court for your hearing.
Once the court holds a hearing, (which you will need to attend), it may then issue an order. If an order is issued, you will then have to tell the other person involved that an order has been made.
IF YOU ARE 17 YEARS OLD AND UNDER
Anyone under the age of 16 will need to apply to the High Court for permission to apply for these injunctions.
Anyone aged 16 or 17 will need a litigation friend to represent them in court. A litigation friend can be a parent, family member, or personal friend.
Once you’ve sent in your form/s, you will need to arrange for the person you’ve brought the injunction against to be notified about your application. You can do this by sending a copy of your application and witness statement to the person named inside the application. Delivering a legal document in this way is called ‘service’, and as a process it involves making sure the person gets a copy of the documents in person.
If you have a solicitor they will do this on your behalf, or you can ask the court to serve the documents for you.
The court will also give you a document called a ‘Notice of Proceedings’, which will include a date and time for you to come to the court to talk about your case.
If the person you have brought the injunction against chooses to challenge your application, you may need legal representation. Legal aid is offered if you have been a victim of domestic abuse or violence.
As always, if you are worried that you or your child could be in serious danger or you have already experienced abuse, please report your concerns to the police.
If you’d like more advice on how to apply for the above orders, you can contact the following charities: Refuge, Women’s Aid and the Men’s Advice Line.
Researching Reform 
So this is the rhetoric deployed to get out of admitting the fraud associated with non molestation orders and the related legal aid.
BuzzFeed news have already investigated and revealed the scam of the National Centre for Domestic Violence writing scripted statements for applicants, ensuring applicants flouted the criteria for applying ex parte so the legal aid ticket was issued before the respondent even knew of the injunction, the complicity of lower court judges issuing these orders ex parte despite not meeting the criteria, and the NCDV pocketing what must have been at least hundreds of thousands of pounds in illicit if not illegal referral fees from the firms signed up to this scam.
Not forgetting either that NCDV were masquerading as a charity whilst getting clients referred to them by the police. And that this disgusting scam continues even now the NCDV has withdrawn, despite Duncan Lewis being sanctioned by the SRA for their part in this mass abuse of public funding.
No, all this gets brushed under the new rhetoric of: ‘ NMOs are being used because the police are not using their powers.’ Why might that be? Maybe because the police are normally the first on the scene, have a more forensic approach and won’t proceed without some evidence, perhaps because they are liable for claim against any misuse of power.
Not so the family courts and legal firms, who thrive on such misuse, and are unaccountable. Family courts issue injunctions like sweets without testing evidence and often without any likely need for the injunction whatsoever. Respondents who want to dispute the issue are forced to wait 6 months or more for their hearings, with the injunction extended meanwhile, lawyers already coining it in, and courts appropriating business. And if it goes to fact-finding, the applicant has lawyers paid for whilst the respondent is forced to self represent or pay their own fees. And it is in the interests of both the applicant’s lawyers and the court to find allegations made against the respondent as true to smooth over the disgusting injustice already inflicted.
Perhaps that explains why the judgments are not made public, as the manner in which findings are made by lower court judges normally flouts the principles laid down in several High Court judgments.
Then we look at the research and see that 70% of DV allegations in family courts are false with 90% unsubstantiated. An industry built on a risk that does not exist?
Amongst the figures are some genuine cases that are not properly seen to because the courts are awash with too much work on the back of these type of scams. Risk is presumed where it does not exist and unidentified where it does. This system does not operate on the candid evaluation of risk but the appropriation and maintaining of business.
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Well said.
and i suspect that your % rate of DV allegations in family courts being false very likely accurate.
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Good morning. We have written about this before on the blog. The stats quoted by LonsB have no basis in fact or evidence, and the research that has been carried out shows that the majority of allegations are likely to be true. Please search our blog for the stats. Cheers.
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“the research that has been carried out shows that the majority of allegations are likely to be true”.
the problem with this is how that research was carried out. we dont hear of researchers speaking to parents in a DV allegation dispute. what evidence gathering did they do in terms of listening to both sides etc. probably none. just like Social services they rely on Hearsay and the speculations of other So-called professionals who we know can and do get it Wrong a lot of the time.
this is why the SS win 95% of Family court cases because proven evidence is never actually proven at all.
Research stats can be a good thing but also dangerously bad and as we know will always be disputed as inaccurate or unfounded.
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My ex invented the fiction that I had been and remained subject to non-molestation order. She proceeded to broadcast this lie all over town. I received numerous letters from her solicitor accusing me of the latest alleged acts of harassment none of which had ever happened, which would have been violations of the non-existent non-molestation order, if it had existed.
The local authority social worker also promulgated the misinformation given to her by my ex. This persuaded the Head of School to exclude me unlawfully my son’s Christmas play, as shown here:
[Content removed]
It may be seen that the Head of School was convinced she had a copy of a non-molestation order on file, until she showed it to the police, who agreed with me that she was misinterpreting a contact order in my favour, as though it had been a non-molestation order against me as she had mistakenly believed. This notwithstanding that I had begged her to get legal advice on the correct interpretation of the order some weeks before the showdown.
Subsequently, I settled a libel claim against the police, because a police officer had repeated in writing the untruth that I had been “stalking” my ex. I now have sufficient evidence to qualify for Legal Aid on the grounds that I am a victim of domestic violence inflicted on me by my ex. But it has taken me years to get this far, and now I am encountering reluctance on the part of solicitors I approach to take on my case.
The police are not “the law”
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I honestly believe that it would be better if there was no such thing as a non-molestation order. Having suffered so much because of the fabrication of a non-existent non-mol, I dread to think what might have happened to me if there had actually been a non-mol in place. Trivial or (in my case) wholly fabricated “molestation” is something the state ought to keep out of. Serious molestation is always going to be a real crime, for which the motivation to “molest” a former intimate partner, if it is about contact with children, which it often is, is more a mitigating factor than an aggravating factor anyway in the mind of anybody right-thinking.
Non-mols are a type of pre-crime, in which a non-offender is punished not for doing anything, by for being suspected of wanting to do something. They are a weapon in the state’s war on dads.
Alas, it is proving difficult to get justice. I believe that the law needs to be changed. [Content removed]
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Many thanks for your post, and I’m genuinely sorry you’ve been through what you have. Due to reporting restrictions, we have had to remove some of the content in your post, which we hope you’ll forgive.
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Actually, I am fairly well advised legally nowadays, to the effect that I am not breaking any reporting restrictions, so you would not be either. However, I can understand why you might have been nervous about the possibility that I might have been breaking reporting restrictions. Of course I forgive your cautious redactions.
The video, [edited], and the blog post, [edited], were only citations supporting the facts you did publish. Your removal of those links didn’t detract from my points.
The suggestions for changes in the law in the [edited] post to which I had linked, might have contributed to a topic of discussion suitable for this site, namely how Children Act social work is done and whether this is lawful. However, even that was not the topic of this page. I invite you to read about those suggestions and to post about them yourself, assuming that you see any validity in my three bullet points.
So, really, you did no harm at all leaving out the links. Thanks for accepting the comment, minus the links. That’s as much as I deserved. 🙂
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Thank you for understanding. It’s not a question of anxiety, more a need to follow the law so we can stay open to the public and make sure they can access the site and engage with others on it. And of course, we can’t take posters’ affirmations as proof of permission to report, so you’ll have to forgive the further redactions in your current comments, but if you want to email proof which shifts that burden, then you are welcome to do so. Thanks again.
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It isn’t possible for anybody to prove the non-existence of an order prohibiting the publication of specific information.
I could show you the final order in the libel case. It doesn’t say that it must not be published. But you could suspect that there was a separate order saying that which I hadn’t told you about..
I can tell you that no court has to my knowledge ever considered whether the video could lawfully be made public. I cannot prove that. Perhaps there has been a hearing I know nothing about that mentions it, although I doubt it, because I cannot imagine where there would have been.
I could show you correspondence from the European Court of Human Rights in which that court makes no order to anonymise the applicant or to redact any part of the application. But you might wonder if the court sent another letter, which got lost in the post, making reporting restrictions.
Ultimately, I cannot stop you suspecting that maybe some court order exists that I haven’t told you about, and don’t even know about myself. The general principle is surely that if there is a court order that one doesn’t know about, one cannot get into any sort of trouble for breaking it.
None of the links I offered led to papers used in the Family Court. We know that in such cases there is usually an order restricting reporting.
In A v Cornwall, which was held in open court and of which the judgment is on Baili, there were various orders at the interlocutory stage. The chief requirement was not to identify the minor, even indirectly. However, the trial judge himself broke that order, by blurting out the title of an article, attributing it to the anonymised claimant, who had also published an article naming the minor child and the article the judge had mentioned, both under his own real name. For months, the cat was out of the bag because of the judge’s letting it out, to anybody prepared to do the jigsaw puzzle. When the time came to take the case to Strasbourg, I took specific advice, and was told that I was not allowed to anonymise names of individuals in my pleadings in the European Court of Human Rights. I had wanted to.
Did you look at the three bullet points?
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Not yet.
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An interesting piece of research, shared with Researching Reform by Charles Pragnell: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10538712.2017.1390717
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You also need the power of arrest attached as the police will still do nothing. I took one out myself. My stalker actually appeared whilst I was awaiting the court to process. I returned to the court, knowing where the stalker was I returned and handed it to him. I left met a friend, 10 mins later the stalker appeared and tried to hand it back, Long story he then attacked me. Was arrested charged, received a suspended sentence. He had already had a caution.
The police have acted disgracefully throughout. And yet it was the police who told me to get the non-mol. He has attacked me since and verbally abuses me each time I happen to see him when I am out. All on CCTV yet the police have told me case is closed. To get another order what for…it has made him worse!
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Thank you for your comment, and I’m so sorry you’ve had this experience. You have raised some very important points: that police are potentially directing people to these orders, that the orders actually prevent harm when they could incite anger and make things worse, and that evidence does not seem to be taken into account. These are all factors we are seeing emerge from cases like these, and thank you for sharing them with us.
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These orders may be a good thing for genuine Victims of DV but very bad news for those who are Victims of false allegation (Mainly Men).
it also opens the door to a easy way for one parent to perpetrate Parental Alienation on another. this is bad for parents who are innocent and bad for the children who cant see them.
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said on camera “The system is rigged against the people”.
So very true and its getting worse as time goes on.
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i feel the future of todays children looks pretty bleak.
they wont be able to walk down the street without having some false allegtion made against them then suddenly they find themselves dropped into a spiders web of systemic madness with no way out other than the exit via a court room with a judge so far out of touch with everyday life and common sense its frightening.
i think the public are going to be controlled and abused in the future like never before. its already started.
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The day to day lives of people are being made unnecessarily stressful and fearful by the very people who are supposed to look after them, and keep them safe.
It is a nightmare scenario for the unwary victims of what appears to be state manipulation and mismanagement of people’s lives. This has the hallmarks of state cynicism by those who never having experienced the horrors of the victims, try to deliver platitudes from a distance via party-political conferences and the like; always ready to give advice without personally ever having to put it to the test.
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Reblogged this on Musings of a Penpusher and commented:
The day to day lives of people are being made unnecessarily stressful and fearful by the very people who are supposed to look after them, and keep them safe.
It is a nightmare scenario for the unwary victims of what appears to be state manipulation and mismanagement of people’s lives. This has the hallmarks of state cynicism by those who never having experienced the horrors of the victims, try to deliver platitudes from a distance via party-political conferences and the like; always ready to give advice without personally ever having to put it to the test.
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