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Family Court Danger

How Children Are Put at Risk by Family Courts

By Clare ScanlanPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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When a woman bravely flees from an abusive relationship or finds out that her husband has sexually abused her children, she quite reasonably expects that the law will protect her and her children from him. She quickly finds out that this is not the case. Family Courts do not protect women and children from abuse, they protect the abuser, putting the mother and children back in danger and allow the perpetrator to continue his abuse.

Family Courts and CAFCASS, Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service, minimize or ignore abuse and promote contact with the father at all costs. Solicitors tell women not to mention abuse in court or risk custody being transferred to the abuser. In fact, women who resist contact with the abuser are labelled as hostile and accused of future emotional abuse of the children or of parental alienation, a discredited theory, which ignores the children’s legitimate fear of the abuser and accuses the protective mother of alienating the children against their father.

Abusive fathers and CAFCASS accuse mothers of being mentally unstable and pay for psychological reports to support this. These mothers are often suffering from Anxiety and PTSD caused by the abuse of themselves and their children by the father and the family court process, which is then used against them to give custody to the abusive father.

The public doesn’t know what happens in family courts because of the strict secrecy of what happens there. They don’t hear about the unjust and cruel decisions unless a mother takes her children and run and then they only hear one side of the story. Women like Samantha Baldwin, Rebecca Minnock, and much more recently, Ellie Yarrow Saunders ran with their children. Samantha Baldwin reported sexual abuse of her boys, and Rebecca Minnock, that her son was scared of his father. Both have lost custody of their children. Ellie Yarrow Saunders has, at time of writing, still not been apprehended and is so still able to protect her son.

It is beginning to look like women haven’t got the right to leave their husbands—however abusive. If they leave there is no way they can protect their children. The more they speak out, the more likely they are to lose their children to the abuser.

Family courts are “private” to protect the children from publicity. But with no public scrutiny, transparency or accountability horrible miscarriages of justice and abuse of power can occur. Women are often subject to “gagging” orders so that they cannot speak out about the problems they have faced in family courts and find themselves threatened with jail if they do or at least loss of their children to the abuser through reversal of custody.

Even Sir James Munby, former president of the family division, has argued that “there is a need for greater transparency in order to improve public understanding of the court process and confidence in the court system.”

Another problem that women face in Family Court is money. Since 2012, it is now virtually impossible to get legal aid for private law cases concerning child contact. Legal aid is only available to victims of domestic abuse if they can provide documentary evidence that they have suffered domestic violence. This means that women who escape abusive relationships and are dragged into court by their abusers can’t afford to have legal representation and have to self-represent, often against the lawyers and barristers that their ex’s can afford. This leaves the women her children in a very vulnerable position. They are then bullied by their ex’s barrister and by the judge and unable to obtain the legal information they need. It also puts abused women in the dreadful position of potentially being cross-examined by the man who abused them. A man used to bullying and intimidating this woman.

Ex’s often make repeated court applications, so a final order can be made and then the father makes another application and the woman has to go through the whole process again. Over and over again. Women are then expected to encourage their children to go to contact, to promote contact with a man they are scared of. A man that the mother may have a restraining order against. A man that may have gone to prison for the violence against her. If the mother doesn’t promote contact she can face prison or community service.

It also appears that family court judges do not understand the dynamics of domestic violence. When a judge says that a woman who was hit with a bat and made to drink bleach by her husband was “not vulnerable” because she was intelligent and had a network of friends and gave the abuser a suspended sentence obviously has no idea how domestic abuse works. Judges obviously need more training in domestic abuse and how it affects women and children and how to protect them.

With two women a week being killed by their current or previous partners and 19 children having been killed by a parent who was a known abuser and still given contact, isn’t it time that domestic abusers are punished rather than given rights to continue to abuse their ex-partners and children?

“No parent should have to hold their children and comfort them as they die.”—Claire Throssell, mother to Jack and Paul, both killed in 2014 by their father.

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About the Creator

Clare Scanlan

I am passionate about writing! Passionate about animals, especially horses, passionate about women's and children's rights!

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