BBC2 aired a programme today looking at the ways in which UK family courts award contact to abusive parents. The channel will continue to look at this issue over the next few weeks.
Earlier this month, 123 MPs called on the government to launch an enquiry into how family courts treat victims of domestic violence. UK Prime Minister Theresa May rejected the request.
It is encouraging to see the BBC picking up on work carried out by Researching Reform and campaigners like Sammy Woodhouse, Rachel Williams and Teresa Whittaker to offer these important issues even more exposure. We hope the programme doesn’t over-simplify the issues, and offers a careful and well thought out look at why this kind of contact occurs.
You can watch the programme here.
Further reading:
- I Raped You – Now I Want Contact
- Parental Alienation Allegations Sway Family Court Judges Into Enabling Contact With Abusive Parents – Research
- Contact At All Costs? Study Into Care Orders and Domestic Violence Highlights Family Courts’ Slow Progress.
- UK Family Courts Are Harming Children’s and Parent’s Mental Health
Researching Reform 
Saw it live, it was superb! Kudos to all involved – the production team, participants, reformers, campaigners and especially the victims and families, and also to the 120 MPs now on the case. Heartbreaking to watch though – Takutsubo cardiomyopathy.
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I watched this today.
its clear some genuine DV perpetrators are slipping through the net due to sloppy work by Judges but on the flip side all of this is leading to much tougher DV laws being implemented which will no doubt make it so easy to get parents eliminated from their childs life via false allegations. its so easy to bring in new laws but what use are they without robust evidencing and fact finding to go with it. Making allegations is easy.producing the evidence isnt so easy. More video evidence and recorded phone calls is the only way to know the real truth.
if anything this development could prove even worse for Children and birth parents in the long run.
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I agree that any Parent, male or female, who presents a very real danger, physically or psychologically, to a child should have access restricted or as a minimum, monitored, but a carte blanche ban when accusations are made are simply going to increase Parental Alienation without due process or recourse, and then the kids suffer.
Any and all investigations need to look at the holistic picture and not the one sided, and often jaded, views of a small number of people, not matter how passionate they may be or how they may have suffered at the hands of abusers.
Although a Father or Mother may have abused their partner, it should not automatically follow that they are abusive to their children. Such assumptions are dangerous.
Whilst I applaud and support all actions to stop any form of domestic abuse, no matter who perpetrates it, simply making perpetrators criminals is not the answer, we need to address why they are like that, what drives them to behave that way, and what can society do to prevent repeat behaviour, and the clear answers are Education and Counselling. We need to treat domestic abuse as a Mental Health Issue with Criminal overtones. Simply sending an abuser to prison is not the answer, it clearly doesn’t work –
What matters is the children, they need to be allowed to grow up as well balanced, psychologically stable and productive members of society, so any actions we, as a society take, must promote this. Peer Reviewed works clearly show children are best when they have both parents involved in their lives, and worst when they are alienated from one or the other. We need to address this issue head on, not from a gender specific perspective, but from a society and child perspective.
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“children are best when they have both parents involved in their lives, and worst when they are alienated from one or the other. We need to address this issue head on, not from a gender specific perspective, but from a society and child perspective.”
Very well said Jim.
and i agree its not the best way to simply throw alleged DV perpetrators in jail costing the Tax payer £800pw to keep them there.
its almost as if this country is turning into a Police and Jail state. even peaceful campaigners of Truth are being persecuted and sent to prison for ludicrous reasons such as “Hate speech”. im shuire these Labels have been created as part of an Agenda to Silence and Control the public.
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Many abusive partners use child visitation to retraumatise the partner and have little interest in the children other than as a weapon or a control measure.
I agree with you that the family dynamic needs to be looked as a whole so that all angles are addressed and the children’s safety is paramount.
And I totally agree that children need both role models but sadly some parents can be far more detrimental to children and so as a society we have to be able to protect the child regardless of the parents wishes.
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I agree completely. This is our ongoing experience over the last 7 years. The ex can’t even let go even after all this time, and it doesn’t help that he’s failed miserably to ensnare any other poor female in all that time, at least if he had and especially if he got one pregnant, it would take some pressure off his ongoing obsession with us. Not that we’d actually wish that on any other woman! Little one has been doing karate since they were 2 and half yrs old – that helps them tremendously. The only sort of postive side of all this weekly enforced contact is that little one has learnt first hand for themselves what a t**** their father really is – certainly no need for parental alienation on our side – father does a good enough job of alienating our child against himself on each contact visit 😀 😀 😀 As for caring about his child – who says to a four year old “I hope your mummy gets sick and dies”?! Let any man reading this, tell me that that’s what loving fathers do…..
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Story of my life…
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The BBC AND FAMILY COURTS need to look into why narsasistic woman stop innocent fathers having contact with their children. THAT IS CHILD ABUSE…..Also why the court’s are allowing sex discrimination again men when giving more right to mother’s and not 50/50 custody.
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It’s so painful for father’s who are falsely accused for crimes they didn’t do and the system quickly believes the mothers with just a word of mouth without any evidence. Father’s end up forking out lots of money to lawyer just to have to access to see the kids. To make it worse these cases take so long without coming to a decision. Guess who suffers, it’s the kids who are separated from seeing their father. This should completely stop.
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Yes.
and instead of thousands of pounds going into the pockets of Lawyers it could have been spent on those kids enjoying life and going on holidays etc if they hadnt been removed from their homes.
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Because primarily it is not about a mother or father’s wants, needs or rights. It is about the child – first, foremost and last. And both mothers and fathers need to suck it up, even if it chokes them, because if you put the needs of your child first that is what you do and if any parent doesn’t put the needs of their child first, then they don’t deserve any contact whatsoever IMHO.
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I have now seen all of this and I have to say that Victoria Derbyshire was brilliant.
The one aspect that the programme did not cover though (very difficult to cover everything). Is the way in which CAFCASS, go above and beyond normalising domestic violence to the point where they portray the perpetrator in a positive light and the victim in a negative way, and this is for daring to speak out about DV. They ignore all evidence. They go as far as lying in reports and committing perjury in court because they only have one agenda and that’s contact, and yes they will do whatever it takes to achieve this.
If this were not true than why is Ian Joseph speaking out about the injustice of the family courts and the underhand practice of CAFCASS in relation to women. I have long believed that CAFCASS are advocates for fathers. He has enough court experience to have seen first hand how women and children are treated in these situations.
I would also like to add that a finding of fact hearing in my experience is a waste of time, as they do not really want you to provide any evidence of DV, therefore, they unlawfully dismiss as much as they can, and do not allow the majority of evidence to be brought forward, but then they are never (cafcass and court) held accountable so its easy for them.
I do not believe in normalising domestic violence. I simply cannot understand why any man or woman would make excuses for this. I firmly believe that most men take a dim view of men who commit acts of violence towards woman. I also, firmly believe that most women would not make up false allegations of DV if it were not true.
CAFCASS carrying on down the road of DV allegations towards men equals a woman being a liar is draconian. CAFCASS lack of regard towards children that have lost their lives due to their ‘contact at all costs approach’ is deeply disturbing. They care about contact but do not care when things go wrong.
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Hit the nail on the head there. I have a text book about family court law and it states cafcass are all about the father. The guardian was originally called the official solicitor! And cafcass was crap from day one and very nearly they were going to scrap them. The government knew cafcass had failed from the start but still allowed it through even though it was destined to fail. That’s why they’re called CRAPCASS and not CAFCASS by families who’ve had dealings with them.
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I call them NAFFCASS!
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https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156993932669404&id=716224403
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