A Twitter poll carried out by this site has found that 91% of parents going through family law proceedings have been bullied by judges during their cases.
The poll was created in conjunction with our campaign to ensure that families are treated fairly and with respect during the life of their cases. Since launching the campaign we have received hundreds of messages from families saying they were abused by judges during their cases and offering details of their experiences.
The shock revelation comes after barristers complained last month that they were being bullied by judges during court hearings. The Bar Council immediately acknowledged the problem and issued guidance offering lawyers protections against bullying by judges in court.
Researching Reform is now calling on the President of the Family Division to do the same for children, parents and families in child welfare cases.
Our call follows a ruling by the Court of Appeal in February, which found a judge guilty of bullying a mother into accepting care orders for her children. The orders were set aside, however the judge did not face any disciplinary action for her conduct.
These are the most common complaints we received about judges bullying families in court:
- Belittling, humiliating and abusive comments to children and family members
- Behaviour that causes fear or terror
- Demeaning comments about a disabled parent’s disability
- Laughing at a parent’s question
- Cutting off and silencing parents and their solicitors as they try to make a point
- Unreasonable demands in court orders which a “good-enough” parent would not be able to comply with
- Constant criticism of a parent or family member
- Personal abuse for being unable to afford legal representation
- Being bullied into accepting orders
- Threats to remove children from parents before the hearing begins
- Explicitly favouring one parent over another
- Prejudging a case before it has concluded and bullying families into submission
Complaining about being bullied by a judge is almost impossible for parents and families going through family court proceedings.
The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) has been set up for complaints about the personal conduct of judicial office holders, however it does not accept all complaints about conduct which amounts to bullying.
While the JCIO can look into the use of racist, sexist or offensive language; falling asleep in court; social media abuse and incidents where judges misuse their status for personal gain, the list does not include a clearly defined set of behaviours for bullying.
Furthermore, the list of items the office will not investigate includes conduct which could be defined as judicial bullying in certain contexts. And the list of what the JCIO can’t investigate is long. Very long:
- A judge’s decision or order
- Bias in a judge’s decision-making
- A judge allowing one party to speak for longer than another
- A judge refusing to allow a witness to give evidence or admit certain documents
- A judge appearing to react more favourably to one person’s evidence than another’s
- A judge saying that he or she does not believe a person’s evidence, questioning a person’s credibility or criticising a person’s actions
- A judge making an error of law or procedure
- A judge expressing opinions about issues related to a case they are hearing
- A judge’s body language, facial expressions or how a judge has looked at a party
- The amount of costs or damages awarded by a judge
- A judge not reading documents before a hearing
- A judge refusing to transfer a case to a different judge or court
- A judge reserving a case to themselves
- A judge refusing to correspond with a party about a case
- Fraud or any other criminal offence
- Court staff, court bailiffs or the facilities and services provided by courts
- Other bodies such as the Police or Crown Prosecution Service
- Solicitors and Barristers
By contrast, the new guidance issued by the Bar Council for barristers who have been bullied by judges offers counsels protection from a much more robust list of behaviours than the JCIO’s own list. The Bar Council outlined bullying behaviour in its guidance as:
- Personal abuse,
- Sarcasm,
- Contemptuousness,
- Unreasonable demands,
- Relentless criticism,
- Intemperate language,
- Demeaning behaviour,
- Comments designed to embarrass or humiliate.
Parents and family members described several types of bullying by family court judges. We’ve added some instances of bullying below, but a fuller list can be viewed here.
“My son was humiliated by a female judge in Bolton family courts. She read out a letter supposedly from my granddaughter who at the time was just 9 years old saying she wanted to be called Daniel after the bloke her mother was with at the time. While reading the note out the judge smirked constantly, it was disgusting.”
“Judge [edited] verbally abused me in court. He ridiculed me in front of my husband who abused my children and I for 10 years… He couldn’t even get my son’s age correct. I felt humiliated and burst into tears on leaving court.”
“I was made to comply with impossible court orders. When I confessed that I couldn’t comply anymore during a hearing the judge got sarcastic and belittled me. I wish I could have been sarcastic back and asked him if he could have done the order he imposed on me, but of course I couldn’t treat him the same as he was treating me.”
“Litigants in Person suffer the most.”
“The judge wouldn’t allow me to speak about my concerns for my children’s safety, and cut my solicitor off at the middle of every sentence while trying to explain my side of the case. He belittled me and made me anxious at the fact my concerns weren’t been listened to and therefore my children’s thoughts weren’t been viewed or taken seriously.”
Thanks for this post Natasha as this we can relate to in our court case in 2016 thank you so much
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“A judge not reading documents before a hearing”
“Comments designed to embarrass or humiliate.”
And the list the JCiO will not look into is so ridiculous its laughable.
i believe this is all too common in the Family courts and many cases are being decided long before the end of the proceedings. Collusion being a big problem was not mentioned.
it would seem we have a Family court system riddled with very unprofessional, small minded, arrogant and biased judges who play God with peoples lives.
it wouldnt surprise me if at least 50% of Family court judges are simply not up to the job and in many cases have the wrong character for that type of role which is clearly very specialized and requires empathy,decency and fare play.
Nobody looks into the background of these people to see who they really are, what other areas they are involved in and what they have done in the past.
Transparency and accountability is whats needed here.
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Judge [edited] has retired but was guilty of most of the above Supported by SS, Guardian and their legal teams who also were guilty of many of the behaviours described in Guildford. All a disgrace and removed an innocent parents child
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I should have added the parents lawyers were also part of the problem. Berating the father because he would not admit he was what the SS said he was and did. all protecting NHS staff who were the real abusers and caused injuries SS blaming parents for. Had I not witnessed what NHS staff did- I could not have been so sure about sons innocence
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Sorry, but this is a horrible abuse of statistics.
91% of Parents **WHO REPLIED TO A SURVEY** Say They Have been Bullied By Judges in Family Law Cases.
Parents who have not been bullied by judges in family law cases largely saw no reason to take part in the survey.
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Dear TB, the poll allowed for respondents to say if they hadn’t been bullied.
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Obviously, people who were not bullied are much less likely to be motivated to respond to the poll. During my own family court case, I was not bullied by the judge. I saw your poll, and I did not respond because I was not bullied, as I am sure was the case with the overwhelming majority of people who saw your poll but were not bullied. I accept that there may well be a problem in this respect, but this poll has absolutely no statistical validity whatsoever.
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Thanks for your comment TB. That logic could apply to any stat in the world. In retrospect, I wish I had let the poll run longer than 2 days. The site is still being inundated with messages about experiences of bullying, which fit the Bar Council approved definition. One could argue that the stat in my poll is conservative as a result, however my view is a little different as I don’t consider statistical data to be the only source of information we should pay attention to. This site’s take-away from the poll and the ensuing exercise of asking for experiences, is that whatever the actual stat is there is clearly a very big problem that needs to be addressed. Our focus is on that.
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No, Natasha, it couldn’t, and nor could one argue that it’s a “conservative result”. In fact, it’s an outlandish stretch to call this a “statistic” at all. I understand that you are a lawyer, not a statistician, but this is nothing more than a “straw poll”, and you simply cannot use it to determine what has happened to the population of “parents who have been involved in Family Court proceedings”. There is absolutely no basis whatsoever for your claim that 91% of parents are bullied in court, and it is simply not true. I don’t know how many responses you got, but your sample size alone will not have been sufficient to extrapolate to reach this conclusion, and that in itself renders your result statistically insignificant. In order to prove your claim, you would need to take a sufficiently large random sample of all the parents who have been through the Family Court and analyse all of their responses. Your sample is drawn from your Twitter followers, of whom, I think it’s safe to say, many follow you because they have had a bad experience of the Family Court. Furthermore. the sample of your followers which has responded to your poll is self-selecting and skewed towards your hypothesis, which also renders the result statistically invalid. If a large number of people come forward and complain that they have been bullied by a judge in the Family Court, by all means make the claim that this is a real problem and needs to be addressed – and I would agree with you absolutely – but you are simply not entitled to put a number on it and claim that this applies to “91%” of all parents going through the Family Court – er, like, nearly all of them – and it is patently absurd to do so. I am sure that your own experience of the courts will tell you that. I don’t claim to be a mathematician or statistician (it’s been many years…) but I do remember that the first thing to do with any statistical result is to look at it and see if it corresponds with observable reality. There are judges who are bullies, of course, but not 9 out of 10 of them. Just not.
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Wow someone got out of bed on the wrong side.
you are dealing with a battle zone on this issue and yes it is a battle for transparency and change and this site is helping towards some kind of reform and possibly justice for all the casualties of the SS and Family courts.
if you havnt been through this as a parent yourself then your remarks will mean absolutely nothing to most who read it.
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I agree, Doc. And I am on Natasha’s side. Sorry if I came over a bit forceful. I think transparency and accuracy are just as important on the campaign side as they are on the establishment side, that’s all. When you’re writing a document for court, if you don’t weed out the weak arguments, the court will spend all day gleefully demolishing your lesser points, whilst completely ignoring the strong ones – “oh, we’ll look at that later.” If you make patently absurd assertions, then your more rational ones will be dismissed without a second glance.
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Reblogged this on tummum's Blog.
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Both TB and Natasha have valid points. There’s no doubt there’s a problem with Judges and others in the Family Courts and it must be looked in to because the effects on parents and children can be devastating. However, I would not usually respond to a survey like this unless I had a grievance. I would respond to a short questionnaire on whether I was satisfied with the Court process and conduct of officials during the Hearings. I can’t complain that I was ‘bullied’ by the Judge but that certainly doesn’t mean I was satisfied with the way he conducted the case, or his demeanour. I was bullied by a CAFCASS officer and still think, nearly fifteen years on, that her attitude was appalling, but I gave as good as I got and had her removed from the case (by the Judge).
I would agree that there are many ‘professionals’ in this sphere who act unprofessionally and at times without any humanity, and it’s not restricted to Judges. Until there is more transparency and less hubris from those officials, this will continue. All hearings should be recorded and if there is a serious complaint about bullying or other misconduct, that recording should be made available to an independent adjudicating panel. And I mean independent, not one made up of other judges or CAFCASS officers!
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Personally I believe the whole system is corrupt. My experiences in several courts, with several Judges reinforces that belief.
The first Judge, now retired, should have retired much earlier as he was dictated by the LA Barrister on what to do. He was just coasting, waiting for his pension. Although the SW lied in court, several times, the Judge excused her by saying Social Workers have a tough job to do! He failed to reprimand one of the solicitors for screaming one sentence repeatedly at me whilst I was in the witness box when she didn’t get the answer she wanted. I don’t suppose that was on the transcript but it would be on the tapes. The fact that the Judge can alter the transcript from what was really said, after the event, beggars belief! That certainly should not be allowed. What’s the point of having a tape recording saying one thing but the Judge edited transcript saying another?
Only one female Judge initially gave the impression she was going to play fair but even she failed to follow through, as a different Judge was assigned to the next court date, despite her promises that she would hear the case to the end & would do certain things. The follow up Judge had a nasty attitude, was very dismissive & certainly pro LA. He stood out because he acted like the nasty person he really was & didn’t try to pretend otherwise. He also failed to carry out the previous Judges wishes, so what was the point of the first Judge? The final Judge said one thing in court but the court orders were written out differently, as they were written out by the LA solicitor.
In fact the Judges just endorse what the LA wanted from start to finish. A case of the tail wagging the dog. Families do not stand a chance.
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It’s worth noting that if a transcript is requested directly by the Court of Appeal (they have a different form to do this with) it goes directly to the RCJ without being edited by the judge in the lower court. In W (Children) [2015] EWCA Civ 403 the transcript had been requested by both routes, and two different versions arrived in court. Of one discrepancy, Black LJ said, “Well, those three words completely alter the meaning of that entire paragraph”. This, of course is not mentioned in the judgment, but was conveniently swept under the carpet.
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In my case it was alienation by SS and cafcass a huge lack of support, lack of information on letters received regarding the commands by them on to us. we was told we could not use our solicitor due to conflict of interest. The solicitor they provided failed to provide information under the human rights law, and miss informed us many times during the case. Over all i would say felt mostly intimidated by the child protection local authoritys used.
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I was bullied and ridiculed by my judge who was my ex’s former public defender in his Dv case with me
Many times I would come I court asking for my kids to have a therapist for a year , then a new pediatrician since my ex yelled at him and he qthr doctor quit and surgery and then she made a ruling to take my kids away altogether
All I was doing is protecting my kids
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My life and my children’s lives were destroyed by family court judge. I was made bankrupt and I have suffered post traumatic stress for years and may never get better. The judge called me names he wouldn’t let me get legal representation and when I got extremely ill and unable to continue the judge asked one of the court workers if she felt I could continue she replied no the judge said well that is to bad we aren’t stopping and they continued and they just railroaded me and I lost everything and I was not even on trial for anything. Judges think they can make their own rules because no one argues with a judge.
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