In a welcome but very surprising development — and what may be a world first — the United Nations has decided to carry out research on the connection between child contact cases, parental alienation and domestic violence around the world.
The Office is inviting submissions from: civil society actors such as campaigners, bloggers and others with an interest in these issues; international organisations; academics; governments; and national human rights institutions. We have written to the Office to ask whether they are open to receiving submissions from children and families in the UK with lived experience of these issues.
The announcement on the Office’s website has a very good, but very long explanation of why it is carrying out this research, the background to these issues, and what kind of information they need.
In the announcement, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, says she wants to produce a “report on the nexus between custody and guardianship cases, violence against women and violence against children, with a focus on the abuse of the concept of “parental alienation” and related or similar concepts.”
The press release says:
“Despite a strong indication that the parental alienation concept has become a tool for denial of domestic and child abuse, leading to further discrimination and harm to women and children, data on the treatment of the history of intimate partner violence and other forms of domestic violence and abuse when family courts assess custody cases continues to be limited. Data is also limited regarding the degree to which family courts use a gender analysis in their decisions.”
The statement offers nine items the UN is hoping to gather information about:
- The different manifestations or specific types of domestic and intimate partner violence experienced by women and children, including the use of “parental alienation” and related concepts in child custody and access cases. Please also include a description of the different forms of violence that may be experienced by the mother and child as well as fundamental human rights violations, where relevant.
- The factors behind the increased number of allegations of parental alienation cases in custody battles and/or disputes involving allegations of domestic violence and abuse against women, and its differentiated impact on specific groups of women and children.
- The way in which different groups of women and children experience this phenomenon differently based on any intersecting elements such as age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, legal residence, religious or political belief or other considerations and the factors that contribute to these situations.
- The role that professionals play, including welfare workers, child protection services, guardian ad-litem, psychologists, psychiatrists, and how they are regulated in any way as expert witnesses.
- The consequences of the disregard for the history of domestic violence and abuse and intimate partner violence or the penalising of such allegations in custody cases on the human rights of both the mother and the child, and the interrelationship between these rights.
- The challenges in collecting disaggregated data on courts’ practices concerning custody cases, the areas/sectors for which data is particularly lacking and the reasons for such challenges.
- The good practices, strategies adopted by different organs of the State or other non-State actors, at local, national, regional, or international level to improve the due consideration of domestic and family violence, including intimate partner violence against women and abuse of children in determining child custody, as well as in providing remedies and redress for victims/survivors.
- Recommendations for preventing the inadequate consideration of a history of domestic violence and abuse and gender stereotyping in custody cases to restore the human rights of mothers and their children, as well as ensure that survivors/victims are effectively protected and assisted.
- Any other issue of relevance that are vital for consideration but that may not have been mentioned in this call for inputs.
The UN has asked that submissions are no more than 2,000 words and are sent in Word or PDF files. The Office is accepting feedback in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.
Submissions are required to be sent via email to hrc-sr-vaw@un.org and with the subject heading: Input for SR VAWG’s report on violence against women and children in custody cases
The deadline for submissions is 15 December, 2022.
We will post an update as soon as we hear back from the UN about child and family submissions.
You can access the press release here.
Researching Reform 
Reblogged this on tummum's Blog.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Violence against children and women”. Phew, thankfully that leaves nobody out!
The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (2013) – PASK13 – reported that in heterosexual couples, in the minority of cases where the violence was one-way, the perpetrator was TWICE as likley to be the woman as the man.
Why would you give credence to a body that doesn’t give a damn about men as victims of domestic violence?
Mike Buchanan
Party leader
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk
LikeLiked by 1 person
That Mike may well be the case in the UK where women really have asserted themselves, but in most Asian and African countries where women are often kept submissive I AM SURE THAT MEN ARE THE MAIN CULPRITS !
LikeLike
Hard to assert yourself against someone twice your weight and strength who has his hands around your neck – being in the UK makes no difference.
LikeLike
Thanks. Hopefully you read my comment about women outnumbering men 2:1 in inflicting violence on their opposite-sex partners. How does this relate to your “twice the weight, twice the strength” point? Or are you simply cherry-picking instances to suit your ideological stance?
Men are taught from the earliest age not to hit women, and huge numbers of men suffer violence froim women as a result. Maybe we should teach women and girls not to hit men and boys?
Rates of DV are particularly high in lesbian couples, higher than in straight couples, so women are more likely to suffer violence from a female partner than a male partner. Does the “twice the weight, twice the strength” point apply there, too?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Ian – you’re sure? Why? Because you’ve been told so relentlessly, and believed it? Organizations including the BBC and mainstream media have been utterly corrupted by feminists, as has the UN.
We know from men’s organizations in India that it’s not the case there. Indeed, it’s not even possible to charge a woman with committing violence against her husband in India!
LikeLike
Quite so. In a series of population representative studies done by the Ni government, NHS Scotland, Bristol University , Lambeth and more recently the Welsh Assembly it was found young men are far more likely to be hit than hit, and young women are more likely to use a “weapon” , Interestly women are much more likely to say hitting a man is ok. Though in fact both sexes displayed a high tolerance for violence against males while agreeing with ” zero tolerance” in the case of females. Depressingly a high proportion of males were fatalistic about this as “just something that happens” to them. Of course all the studies make the point about the socialisation ofthus boys never to hit females. And the obvious point that women relying on this to persistently assault their partner may eventually thus provoke a similar response. In terms of “psychological abuse” women were much more likely to be the perpetrators , less surprising given social norms. This of course has been researched more recently been by Professors Archer, Graham-Kevan and their teams at universities in Scotland and Northern England. In some ways non of this should surprise as this was exactly what Erin Pizzey the founder of the Refuge movement reported in Prone to Violence. in the late 1970s.
LikeLike
https://kareningalasmith.com/2013/04/29/this-thing-about-male-victims/
LikeLike
Thank God for acknowledgement that domestic violence is, as it always has been, overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women.
LikeLike
Hi, hopefully you’re being ironic?
LikeLike
No. It is not ironic to speak out against violence to women.
LikeLike
But DV is NOT “overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women”. Fact. That’s been known by, and reported by, researchers for DECADES. You might like to check out PASK13, a review of 1,700+ peer-reviewed studies https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/.
LikeLike
That Mike may well be the case in the UK where women really have asserted themselves, but in most Asian and African countries where women are often kept submissive I AM SURE THAT MEN ARE THE MAIN CULPRITS !
Domestic violence is wrong, no matter whom is perpetrating it against the other, I must state as a man, that there is definitely a strong undercurrent and overcurrent of bias against men.
When it comes to domestic violence and there is an unbalanced perception across the world, that only women are victims of domestic abuse, which is emphatically not the case.
Also sweeping statements such as, women are often kept submissive in the Asia’s and Africa’s, is unfortunately, an uninformed, exaggerated and racial bias generalisation to make.
Violence against women and men unfortunately permeates across each continent of planet earth, and it must be addressed regardless of gender.
LikeLike
monomania
mŏn″ə-mā′nē-ə, -mān′yə
noun
Pathological obsession with one idea or subject.
Intent concentration on or exaggerated enthusiasm for a single subject or idea.
LikeLike
Thank God for acknowledgement that domestic abuse is, and always has been, perpetrated overwhelmingly by men against women – in the UK as anywhere else in the World.
LikeLike
I hope you get the medical treatment you need for your monomania and mental health.
LikeLike
We don’t tolerate abusive comments on this site, Ravenchick. Any further replies like the one above will not be published.
LikeLike
Natasha.
You feel free to try and coerce and control me as much as you like Natasha.
But the truth and free speech will never be silenced by tyrants like you.
I will simply post in on 10 more sites, to prove that free speech, science and sanity will never be silenced by abusive tyrants like you.
And I do genuinely express empathy and hope she gets help.
LikeLike
I have no issue with you stating your points without resorting to harassment and verbal assault.
LikeLike
@ Natasha
Thank you for providing evidence that you tend to interpret ambiguous situations as abuse.
That will now be stored under our collect, preserve and store strategy as it strengthens our case.
Your may find this evidence based research, science and sanity useful in recognising your own patterns of behavoiur.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886920303238
Just because you interpret an ambiguous situation as ‘harassment’ and ‘abuse’ does not make it so.
And I have just pointed out the evidence based research, science and sanity that would actually help you and make your life better. What you do with that knowledge or don’t do is entirely your choice.
You’re basically saying that wishing women will be able to get help and support from reputable sources such as the statement made by leading researcher (link below) amounts to “harassment” and “abuse”:
“It leaves women unable to see their own coercive behaviour as a problem, and that is bad for women too because women need to understand that their coercive behaviour will sabotage their relationships. It will negatively harm their children. And most women do not want to have poor relationships and do not want to harm their children, any more than men do.”
Your argument is self evidently incapble of withstanding logical analysis.
We can agree to disagree, but I and other leading subject matter experts consider that it is your behaviour and ideology that is misogynistic and harmsful to women. Because as the expert states, it prevents them from being able to get support to see their own behaviour as a problem which sabotages their relationships.
So from my perspective based on reputable science and research, I consider it is your position that is actually abusive to women because it harms them and prevents them getting support.
LikeLike
It is a matter of culture that women are often kept submissive by law or custom in Africa and Asia and the word often is hardly racist or a generalisation but who cares anyway if it is men or women to blame.?
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS ALWAYS BAD BUT VIOLENCE BY FOSTERERS AND ADOPTIVE PARENTS IS EVEN WORSE .Family courts talking of risk from a parent always omit to recognise that putting a child into care or forced adoption is often the greatest risk of all !
LikeLike
Feminism; the cult of the monomaniacs.
No amount of reasoning, science or sanity will help those who have been indoctrinated in discredited feminist ideology.
Everything just confirms their pre-existing beliefs. Classic monomania.
For example, here’s one cult member displaying their monomania for the world to see:
“Hard to assert yourself against someone twice your weight and strength who has his hands around your neck”
Science and sanity shows women weaponise and attack when the man is most vulnerable (such as asleep). Science and sanity also shows women instigate the majority of violence and abuse (research from Harvard), but people who suffer from the mental health condition of monomania are unable to objectively consider that evidence. So, self evidently the women are more than capable of asserting themselves. It is their inability to meet their relationship needs in non-violent / non-abusive ways that is the root cause of their domestic violence perpetration.
I appreciate my comments will trigger the narcissistic rage of members of the cult of monomaniacs when they feel their power and control slipping away and I will be met with a barrage of insane responses that confirm their pre-exising beliefs.
But the sane majority are waking up to the facts, at least that’s what I Amber Heard. Here’s a tip for life, you really shouldn’t mess with people who are way smarter than you. The best is yet to come.
LikeLike
Here comes Nataha to coerce and control anyone who speaks the truth.
I will be posting a link to this site on 10 more sites and links to reputable scientific research in response to Natasha’s attempts to silence free speech.
Expressing genuine empaty is not abuse. But I notice you have a tendency for interpersonal victimhood don’t you Natasha.
And I genuinely hope you get treatment for your mental health too Nataha.
LikeLike
Clearly the topic of violence against women makes a few men very angry! Calm down dears! So much anger is not good for your mental health:) If you would be kind enough to refer to the original article, the UN research will seek to investigate “violence against women and violence against children, with a focus on the abuse of the concept of “parental alienation.” Even if just as many men were victims as women, why does parental alienation only work as a counter allegation for men? I am extremely glad that this issue has come to the attention of the UN Human Rights Office. DV also includes sexual violence, so I fail to see how being a rape survivor makes me a cult member? Perhaps I should ‘get support to see [my] own behaviour as a problem which sabotages their relationships’. lol.
LikeLike