Decision to grant abusive partner access to daughter ‘alarming', UK court hears
The allegations against the father, who is a member of the armed services, were found to have been proven on the balance of probabilities (the civil standard of proof) in a 2021 fact-finding judgment by the family court.
But Charlotte Proudman, representing the mother, said in written submissions that the findings of fact 'have been put to one side and the focus has been on a 'pro-contact approach''. None of the parties in the case can be named.
The mother is appealing a decision by the recorder Christopher Sharp KC in March in which he said the status quo with respect to the daughter's contact with her father should remain, despite a recommendation by the daughter's court-appointed guardian to reduce contact by ceasing overnight stays.
The mother initially sought an order for a stay on contact or supervised contact with the father but then accepted the guardian's recommendations. She said in submissions: 'Despite such serious findings, contact was ordered to commence between [the daughter] and F [father] without a full risk assessment … The approach in this case has been nothing short of alarming.
'A [sexual abuse] victim ordered to promote contact with her [abuser]. At no stage has there been any consideration, nor any regard given to the impact of the profound sexual violence and abuse that I have suffered. Nor has there been any assessment as to whether F even accepts the findings, which is required.'
She said that the father manipulates her daughter to be mean about her and 'exert control over me and cause me distress', adding that a cross-allegation of 'hostility' against her was victim-blaming 'for struggling to promote my [sexual abuser]'.
Sharp also presided over the 2021 fact-finding judgment, but Proudman told Wednesday's hearing there had been a 'lack of engagement with any of the findings in 2021, which were of course very serious'. She said the father's behaviour was criminal, 'reprehensible and horrific' and added: 'The approach in this case has been nothing short of alarming.'
The court heard that the mother had, at a hearing before a district judge in September last year, agreed to her eight-year-old daughter staying overnight with the father. She said she was 'coerced' into that contact agreement but Carl Geary, for the father, told the family division of the high court in London it was 'freely agreed' by the mother who then made an application to vary it and made fresh allegations against his client.
He told the court the father accepted the 2021 findings but said in written submissions: 'F's position is that the decision was consistent with [the daughter's] welfare being the paramount consideration under section one of the Children Act 1989.
'M [mother] now seeks to depart from a position she previously agreed to, without identifying any material change in circumstances or new evidence of risk as between the time of her agreement and the imposition of the varied contact arrangements. It is F's case that the court made a careful, case-specific assessment of harm and benefit.'
Mr Justice Peel said he expects to give judgment in the next few days.
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Metro
04-07-2025
- Metro
'My abusive ex convinced the courts to give him custody of our daughter'
Briony and her 12-year-old son live just a minute's walk away from the park. They can see it from their kitchen window. However, the 40-year-old, who is speaking under a pseudonym, struggles to see it as a safe space for them to play after her ex – her son's father – appeared there out of the blue one day. 'I was talking to one of the other parents when he turned up and all hell broke loose. He demanded to know who I was talking to and what I was saying to him,' Briony, who is being supported by Refuge, tells Metro from her home. 'He then threatened to kill us, to bury me and my family, and threatened to throw acid in my face'. This is a man who has been battling Briony for access to their son for seven years. As many survivors have experienced, her abusive ex has attempted to control and manipulate her through the family courts. Since the end of their relationship in 2017, Briony's former partner has lodged more than a dozen applications, requiring an endless stream of hearings. It's why the mum-of-two calls the family courts 'an abuser's playground'. Charlotte Proudman, an award-winning family law barrister, tells Metro that 'many survivors think that once they've escaped an abusive relationship or left, then that's the end'. 'But when they arrive at the courtroom door, this is often just the start of another abusive relationship with their perpetrator,' she explains. In Briony's case, she spent countless hours fighting her ex in court, including on her son's birthday last year, which she couldn't celebrate because her statement was due in. Even when her second child was in hospital, her ex doubled down. 'My baby son was in intensive care halfway up the country and even on that day when he was fighting for his life, hooked up to all sorts of machines, I still wasn't allowed to be pardoned from the court hearing – I had to do it in the bereavement room in the neonatal intensive care unit. 'It was just awful.' Briony's former partner is very charming and charismatic, which allowed him to present an entirely different character to the courts and various agencies. 'He was trying to make out that he was the victim of years of abuse and had to save our son,' she remembers. In actual fact, Briony and her son had been subject to a campaign of coercive control that saw him monitor their every move. Isabelle Younane, Head of External Affairs at Women's Aid has said: 'Despite overwhelming evidence, and recommendations set out in the government-led Harm Panel report over five years ago to remove the presumption of contact, the wellbeing and safety of countless women and children continues to be put at risk by the family justice system. 'The Nineteen More Child Homicides report demonstrates how the ongoing 'pro-contact' culture has fatal consequences for children – due to a host of catastrophic failings across family courts and statutory agencies. 'We know that there is a widespread lack of professional understanding around patterns of coercive control, and when combined with constant minimisation of risk and the perception that perpetrators of domestic abuse can still be 'good enough' fathers, it tragically leads to children being killed by known perpetrators of domestic abuse. 'Our recommendations are clear in calling for the urgent repeal of the presumption of contact, as well as for specialist domestic abuse training across the family justice system, to ensure that the complexities and realities of domestic abuse are fully understood. 'It is the safety of children, and not the rights of abusive parents, that must lie at the heart of the justice system.' This extended to where they could go, how long for, and who they could see. 'He didn't even live with us, but he had such a control; he would turn up any time unannounced to check on us; to make sure we were following his rules,' Briony recalls. 'You couldn't just go to the park and talk to any other parents, you just weren't allowed to talk to anyone – males in particular.' Thankfully, she was able to prove five allegations of domestic abuse at a fact-finding hearing, which saw him facing a temporary ban on making more applications. However, Briony adds, the judge told her the ruling might have gone a very different way if she hadn't been able to provide evidence because of the strength of her ex's case. 'My ex absolutely loved it because he could do whatever he wanted in there. It was an exercise in humiliating and degrading me' The mum isn't the only one to complain that professionals – including the judges overseeing their cases – still do not properly grasp that proceedings can be weaponised as a form of post-separation abuse. Domestic abuse and coercive control expert Dr Emma Katz tells Metro 'the overwhelming objective' for judges in family court is to keep children in contact with both parents regardless. This is something that abusive ex-partners know and attempt to use to their advantage, she adds. 'It largely doesn't matter what they've done,' Dr Katz explains. 'It's very difficult for them to have done something that is seen by the court as severe enough to override the wish to have the child in contact with them.' Brothers Jack, 12, and Paul, nine, were killed by their abusive father in 2014 after contact was awarded to him – despite Paul and their mother Claire separately explaining to services what he had subjected them to, with Claire even warning that her ex was capable of killing their sons . After he cross-examined me, the courts allowed my abusive ex to see our sons – and he killed them On a court-ordered, unsupervised access visit, my two sons were lured up to the attic by the promise of a new train set by my abusive ex-husband. While my boys were up there, he set 14 different fires around the house, using petrol so that the flames would spread quickly. He also barricaded the home – not just to make sure that the emergency services couldn't get in but also to make sure that my boys could not get out. My sons were murdered by their father, someone who should have protected them. Read more here One of the main challenges victim-survivors face is that family courts fear 'parental alienation', explains Dr Katz. This is where one parent might be alleged to have repeatedly said or done something to negatively impact the child's relationship with the other parent. A Channel 4 Dispatches survey of 4,000 court users found that the charge of 'parental alienation' was more likely to be levelled at parents who had cited domestic abuse. 'As soon as perpetrators say these words, the court's focus shifts from domestic abuse and seeing the woman as a victim-survivor to questioning whether the mother is actually doing something really wrong here.' She explains that the emphasis is then put on the woman to prove she is not an alienator. The government's Harm Report from 2019, assessing how the family courts respond to claims of domestic abuse and other risks to children and parents, detailed how 'perpetrators were sometimes allowed to raise counter allegations of parental alienation and that these were taken seriously, even when there was little or no supporting evidence'. Lisa* is one mother who has been through this. She has not seen her 18-year-old daughter for six years after being 'forced into' the family courts by her former partner, who 'removed all contact' after accusing her of being abusive while poisoning their child against her. At what point do you die through that constant abuse? She describes sitting in court listening to her abuser 'making statement after statement that was both defamatory or just a downright lie' after being told her allegations against him were too historic to consider. Lisa says she has been made the subject of barring orders, been ordered to pay costs and even had a non-molestation order granted against her for trying to get the court to consider expert safeguarding reports. 'At one point, the judge was saying 'you need to get a psychiatric report to prove that you are not what your ex is saying',' Lisa recalls. 'My ex absolutely loved it because he could do whatever he wanted in there. It was an exercise in humiliating and degrading me.' She tells Metro the ordeal has destroyed her finances, as well as her physical and mental health, to the extent that she has been given support for suicidal thoughts. 'My health is failing, my finances are failing. And I see that my daughter is not only also being abused but she's also being taught to be malevolent towards me,' she says. 'None of the services are bothered by mothers being denied contact, only fathers.' Lisa has repeatedly reached out through letters – on Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, birthdays, and at Christmas – but never hears anything back. 'I end up sitting there thinking it's a bit like someone saying, 'well, we'll just let him keep strangling you, and so far you haven't died so it doesn't meet our threshold'. At what point do you die through that constant abuse?' It is an acronym for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, and describes a pattern of behaviour in which perpetrators try to deflect responsibility for their actions by seeking to portray themselves as the victim and the actual survivor as the aggressor. In her book, He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court, Dr Proudman calls the notion of 'parental alienation' a 'pseudoscience' that men use 'to flip a family court dispute on its head'. She says that when it comes to fathers demanding contact, the courts seem to take the view that it is better for a child to have a highly abusive and dangerous parent than go without one. One of Dr Proudman's current clients is a woman whose daughter was allowed to stay overnight with her father, despite him having sexually, violently and coercively abused the mother. She recently won an appeal at the High Court against the previous judge's decision regarding overnight contact – however her ordeal is not over. 'She is now being accused by the father of not enthusiastically supporting the relationship between the rapist father and her child,' Dr Proudman says. The fear now is that if the mother is found to be acting hostile towards the father, that he could get more contact or even full custody. 'In what world would a rape victim be pleasant, kind and enthusiastic and support her abuser to her child? I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe.' They have no choice but to send children off to these contact visits and see them often come back dishevelled, devastated, crying, furious Penelope* is another mother whose abusive ex was given access to her daughter with lasting consequences. 'My life's been damaged and my son's life's being damaged from an emotional perspective,' Penelope says. Penelope, who is also supported by Refuge, explains that when her 5-year-old does go to stay with his dad, he has been ignored, left alone and picked on by others in the house. The boy is now in therapy because of the anxiety in the lead-up to and immediately after contact visits. Refuge is the largest domestic abuse organisation in the UK. If you're being abused, or are concerned about someone you know, Refuge can offer support. Refuge helps thousands of survivors per day to overcome the many impacts of domestic abuse – from physical, to emotional, to financial –and works confidentially and individually with every survivor, tailoring a unique plan that meets her needs and helping her rebuild her life. You can find out more about the charity here; and if you need help now, you can contact Refuge 24/7, for free, on 0808 2000 247. 'They say a child needs to see both parents in order to grow up as a well-rounded individual – what about when this happens? Courts are just not interested – I think they actively choose to turn a blind eye. 'What I find is that they seem to bend over backwards for the male. Yet every time I say it's domestic abuse, it's met with silence.' Penelope's ex has taken her to court four times for a final hearing and withdrew a six-figure sum to bankroll his pursuit of her. 'As a domestic abuse victim, I don't want to negotiate with him, but I do so to keep it out of court. 'But he forces a final hearing every single time because he is never penalised by the court for wasting its time, which ultimately has a detrimental impact on my child.' More Trending As Dr Katz explains, for abusers who have lost control of their victims, 'the children are really the big card they have left to play'. 'Victim-survivors are trapped, sending their children off to perpetrators, who are then using that time to continue the abuse – or even escalate what they are doing.' 'They have no choice but to send children off to these contact visits and see them often come back dishevelled, devastated, crying, furious – and there's very little they can do about it.' 'We are reforming Family Court proceedings to provide much earlier access to specialist support for brave survivors of domestic abuse. 'Judges already have the power to restrict parental involvement if the court considers there to be any risk of harm to the child. We are currently reviewing the presumption and will publish our findings shortly.' *Names have been changed MORE: Family of teacher accused of sexually abusing pupil say she's 'victim of sexism' MORE: I hated being a mum the minute my baby was put on my chest MORE: I hate primary school – I can't wait for my daughter's last day
Telegraph
17-04-2025
- Telegraph
‘I was a marked woman': Meet Britain's most controversial barrister
Charlotte Proudman likes to rattle cages. A barrister specialising in family law and domestic abuse cases, she has won several awards, including Woman of the Year at the Women and Diversity in Law Awards last month, in recognition of her campaign to make the Garrick Club open its doors to women. And she has made a lot of headway in the family courts, challenging legislation that discriminates against women in cases of domestic abuse and parental custody, which she writes about in her new book, He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court. But Proudman, 36, has also had a lot of flack. Her constant battle against inequality and her fight for justice in the legal system has led to her being branded a Feminazi by the Daily Mail, and a lot worse ('a joke in legal circles', 'a c—t ', an 'insufferable w—ker') by others in her profession. I meet Dr Proudman, as she is known (she has a PhD, in female genital mutilation law and policy), at Goldsmith Chambers at the Temple in London. I had been slightly disconcerted to see a photograph of her on her website, commissioned by King's College, Cambridge, where she did her doctorate between 2013 and 2017, posing in a long legal gown with a bare midriff, next to Ted, her cavapoo, on a chair, but here she is in person – composed, friendly and sympathetic, wearing chunky pearls and a black suit. The best possible riposte to all the contentiousness and criticism levelled against her is her recent victory in court. It was not a case that she was representing as a barrister – it was a case against her, brought by the Bar Standards Board (BSB). In March 2022, a judge named Jonathan Cohen ruled against her in a high-profile divorce case which involved allegations of coercive control, in which Proudman had been representing the wife. Proudman thought the judgment unfair, and took to Twitter (as it was then) to complain that the judge had not taken the issue of domestic abuse seriously. In a 14-thread tweet, she posted a summary of the judgment, and commented that 'this judgment has echoes of the 'boys' club' that still exists among men in powerful positions'. As a result, she was taken to a tribunal by the BSB, which – she claims in her book – had been looking for a test case to establish what barristers could and couldn't say on social media about judges and their judgments. It was completely unexpected, and she was terrified, she says. 'It could have been the end of my career.' In December 2024, after the BSB had pursued it relentlessly for three years, the case was finally dismissed. It was 'a clear instance of sex discrimination', Proudman said at the time. Does she mean if a man had done this they would not have held him to account? 'We know they wouldn't, because we had the comparators – male barristers who had said things about judges and nothing had happened to them. And they didn't just investigate me or give me a warning – they went full force, five charges. It's not insignificant. They really went for it. I do think it was very personal.' Proudman is now taking action against the BSB for discrimination. A senior KC, who does not want to be named, told me that he thought the BSB was entirely wrong to have brought the case, as did many of his colleagues. 'My sense is that there was almost no support at all for the BSB proceedings. Apart from anything else, we all think the BSB are f—king useless.' He says that opinions fell into different categories: 'A lot of people felt some sympathy for Charlotte, but also thought she had brought it on herself, because why did she need to say it publicly, even if it's true? It was asking for trouble. And there is a small group – like me – who thought that the proceedings were wholly wrong, and that the failure of the BSB/SRA [Solicitors Regulation Authority] to tackle the kind of abuse that Charlotte has received from other professionals over the years was also wrong.' Proudman is more philosophical about the abuse she gets these days, though she still finds it hard to take. 'I realise that it comes with the territory. I really struggle when it comes from colleagues.' She does get support from colleagues too, she says, but 'largely in private, because they don't want to speak publicly about it. The loudest voices are often very critical and nasty, and the supportive ones are the quiet ones – so it doesn't look very balanced.' It all stems back to an incident that happened 10 years ago, she believes: the LinkedIn incident. 'I was a marked woman' The writing was already on the wall when she started out. She was called to the bar in 2010, and was taken aback by 'the most male environment' she had ever encountered, especially after growing up in an all-female household and going to a university in which 60 per cent of the students were female (she originally got a degree in law and sociology at Keele University in 2009, followed by an MPhil in criminology at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 2011). At lunch with someone who had been assigned as her mentor, she was told, 'You've done really well to get here and get this far, but you'll never make it.' Subsequently, when she applied for work experience at a firm of solicitors, one of the partners suggested that, instead of submitting a CV, she should send a bikini picture instead. In 2015 she received a message in her inbox on LinkedIn, saying, 'Delighted to connect, I appreciate this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!! You definitely win the prize for the best Linked in [sic] picture I have ever seen…' It was from Alexander Carter-Silk, a senior partner at a London office of solicitors. Taken aback, Proudman replied saying that she found his message offensive as her use of LinkedIn was entirely for professional reasons and 'not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men'. Then she put a screenshot of the message she had received on Twitter, asking if anyone else had had similar approaches. She was immediately branded an attention seeker, though in fact the attention was instigated by Roll On Friday (a 'cheeky and irreverent' legal website) which retweeted her. From there it was picked up by the Daily Mail. 'Heaven help the poor man who actually tries to ask her out on a date, let alone try to get her into his bed,' wrote the ever sympathetic and sisterly Sarah Vine. 'He'd have better luck propositioning a porcupine.' Two days on the front page of the Mail 'set me up as target practice for the media. I was a marked woman.' Proudman is an only child who grew up in Leek, in Staffordshire. Her mother was a teacher, and a single parent – her father was an alcoholic who died in a car accident when he was drunk when Proudman was four. Her mother was a strong believer in education and ambitious for her daughter, and Proudman's achievements have been pioneering. Her particular speciality is in family law and domestic abuse. In He Said, She Said, she writes in detail about some of the cases she has been involved in, and one of the things she is most proud of is her work in the area of implementing FGM protection orders, together with Forward, a group of lawyers and FGM survivors. Proudman was also responsible for a change in the law at women's refuge centres, where previously, police were able to turn up in full uniform with court orders obtained by perpetrators that the women were fleeing from, which revealed their whereabouts and put the refuges in very difficult positions. On the day I interviewed her she was about to achieve another first, in a case where a woman she had represented whose original allegations of rape and domestic abuse had been dismissed 'in error' (which was reversed two years later) was given the legal right to talk publicly about her case. (The family courts used to be entirely secret, but recently have been open to reporting, after a two-year pilot. Previously, journalists could report what they witnessed in family courts but this will be the first time that a parent has made a successful application to speak out without having to go through the press.) In this case, the judge ruled that the woman's ex-partner, who had countered her accusations with his own – of 'parental alienation' – should have no contact with the child. Parental alienation is something that Proudman takes particular issue with. Its premise is that one parent has turned the child against the other, and it is often used by the estranged parent to get access to the children, or to overturn custody arrangements. It is not new, but has become increasingly weaponised in custody cases, and the reason it's so alarming to Proudman is the fact that allegations of parental alienation are certified by psychologists who are often unregulated. 'Parental alienation syndrome was first recognised by Richard Gardner, in the USA in the 1980s,' she says, and although it has been discredited in the States, 'it's made its way over here. It never used to be as prevalent as it is now – I see it in 98 per cent of the domestic abuse cases that I am involved in. 'It's a contentious label which is now a whole industry – you have a lobby of so-called experts, regulated and unregulated, who specialise in it and purport to diagnose it when they're instructed, which can result in a transfer of residence for the child.' Even if that means returning the child to the parent from whom they have been removed. 'This 'expert' will meet the parents and talk to the children and then offer their opinion in court. Sometimes they will try to pathologise with some sort of psychological condition – histrionic personality disorder is quite a common one we see mothers labelled with, though I certainly don't see fathers labelled with personality disorders. Then, if the experts have a veneer of legitimacy, the courts accept their opinion. 'In this country 'psychologist' is not a regulated title. And it's lucrative – if you win one [case] you get a name for yourself, and you're instructed in more cases, and that becomes your niche.' 'You need a judiciary which reflects the society we live in' He Said, She Said details many of the cases in which she has acted to try to protect women in the family courts, and there are some horrific stories: the English girl, Lisa, who had escaped with her child from her abusive partner in Australia, and was ordered to return, even though she feared for her safety; Beth, who wanted another child but whose husband said she had to agree to certain 'conditions', including that she should 'entertain all sex requests – whenever and whatever – with a smile on my face and as a willing participant'; Mary, whose allegation of being raped and strangled by her ex-husband was disbelieved by a judge who, in part, deemed her 'too intelligent' to have allowed it to happen. Or Daria, who was ordered back to Sudan with her daughter, even though the 11-year-old was likely to be subjected to FGM, from which two of Daria's sisters had died. It must be distressing to lose cases, having exhausted all legal avenues. How does Proudman detach herself? 'I'm not sure that I do detach from them – I suppose that's why I'm the person I am. I'm a campaigner as well as a barrister, and that's why I've written the book. Many people – and I'm not criticising them, in some ways I'm quite envious – will finish a case and move on to the next, and that's it for them. But for me – especially if it goes wrong and I think the decision is unjust – I will rant and rave about it, and try everything to secure some sort of justice for these people. I will make it my mission.' She says in the book that she keeps going 'because misogyny and sexism are everywhere in the legal profession'. Does she get disillusioned? Is it mainly male judges she is referring to, or is it to do with a certain generation? Statistics suggest that diversity within the courts is slowly improving, she says, 'but it's at a glacial pace. Change is so incredibly slow. 'I think we probably have to recognise that the legal establishment is still very white, male and privileged. If you look at the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court, the vast majority of those sitting in really senior positions are white public school/Oxbridge-educated men who just don't have the same experience as many of the people in front of them – and I do think that you need a judiciary which reflects the society we live in, so they can understand some of their experiences and what people have been through.' 'There is a substantial 'old school' element,' says my anonymous source, the senior KC, 'who are not wholly unthinking, and I'm sure don't consider themselves misogynistic, but in fact inhabit a world steeped in sexism. They are perfectly happy for women to succeed, and recognise the value and merit of successful women colleagues, but they want them to do so within the established norms of the profession. What they don't like is those who want to do it on their own terms, which I think Charlotte Proudman represents: making a fuss, calling out behaviours, and drawing attention to the massive gender pay disparities. I think that there is a deep-seated defensiveness in the profession, which remains (white) male-dominated at senior levels. I also have a female colleague who feels that Charlotte is doing women no favours, because she is just picking fights. Everyone agrees that women should be treated fairly, but we would all much prefer it if they just quietly got on with the job, instead of bleating about the various insults, obstacles, aggressions etc with which they are confronted.' Which is not Proudman's style. Is she now a member of the Garrick? 'I wish! I'm still waiting for my invitation – it must have got lost in the post. I hope in time they will see it as a real benefit when they actually start opening their doors to more women, rather than the three or four or whatever it is now. I'd want to be a member in order to bring in other women, which is probably why they don't want me.' What advice might she give to aspiring female barristers? 'Just carry on even in the face of adversity – and never give up,' she says, and adds a quote from American lawyer and activist Florynce Kennedy, with which she ends her book: 'Rattle cages, make noise. Cause trouble.' (Hear, hear.) The following is an extract from He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court The silver bullet I squinted into the laptop screen to catch my first sight of my newest client. A pale, cautiously smiling face peered back. We were about to begin a conversation that had been long in the making. Florence was not the first client who had approached me directly to represent her, but she was undoubtedly the only one who'd had to fight in court to earn representation in the first place. Her legal battle against a situation she felt was fundamentally unjust had now been going on for several years. What made this all the more remarkable was that she was still just 15 years old. Florence had been put in this unconventional, unreasonable situation because, five years earlier, her father had obtained a court order saying that she should live with him. After her parents separated when she was eight, she had been living happily with her mother and having regular contact with her father. But because there were, as there often are, difficulties with a child being passed between two parents at odds with each other, the case ended up in court. As a result, Florence was ordered to move from living with the parent she chose to the one she had not. When her case crossed my desk in mid-2021, I was still unfamiliar with the approach her father had used to achieve this, though it would soon become a regular part of my work. I was about to learn about 'parental alienation', the allegation that one parent has turned the children against the other. Soon I would see the almost extraordinary power this can have in court: how a deceptively simple argument, dressed up as science and supported by carefully chosen experts, can be used to upend children's lives, persuading the court that they should live with the parent who was accused of being abusive in the first place. I was late to the party in a case whose history went back seven years to when her parents had separated. Initially, Florence had lived with her mother and had regular contact with her father. In the legal proceedings that began after contact broke down, the court found the father had been abusive on several occasions – he had slapped the mother and 'held Florence down and shouted at her when she had a tantrum'. Far from the case going against him, however, it was turning his way. As his own abusive behaviour was being established by the court, in parallel, the narrative of parental alienation was being established. A child psychiatrist interviewed Florence and gave evidence to the effect that the problems over contact had arisen 'because of the mother's distress and unresolved angry feelings about the breakdown of the relationship [which] was being communicated to Florence'. The judge picked up this thread and concluded that the mother 'was not giving Florence permission in an emotional sense' to have a relationship with her father. She ordered the contact arrangements to be reversed, and for Florence to live with her father. It was a classic example of how parental alienation can be used to flip a family dispute on its head. The father did not have custody of Florence and was found by the court to have been abusive to both her and the mother. Yet with the right expert in his corner, Dr Mark Berelowitz, he had been able to persuade the same judge that the mother was the real root of the problem and to rule that Florence should instead live with him. 'Parental alienation' was the silver bullet that allowed this man to override the objections of his child, and the reality of his former abuse, to get the court to rule in his favour. My new book, He Said, She Said, covers a collection of real family court cases that reveal how the system protects some and fails too many. This book is my call to action for change. Out 1 May. Preorder now. 🔗 🔗 — Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) March 20, 2025 From the age of 12, Florence had been repeatedly trying to gain her own legal representation, with support from her maternal family, to make the case that she should live primarily with her mother. One judge had refused this, and another actually banned her from making these applications for two years. After the two-year prohibition had passed, she applied again and was rejected once more. Only when she appealed this to the High Court did a decision finally go her way. With Florence then nearing the age of 16, at which point her wishes could no longer legally be ignored, her father consented, and a judge granted the appeal. Now, finally, she had been granted the right to be independently represented and to put her case in front of a High Court judge, Mrs Justice Frances Judd. I argued that Florence being forced to live with her father did little good for their relationship, just as it was unfair to her and her mother. The guardian recommended that she alternate between parents on a weekly basis, which Florence's father supported. We argued that this would not reflect her wish to live primarily with her mother, and the judge ultimately agreed, ordering an arrangement that saw her granted this right for the majority of each month. As my career has gone on, I have increasingly seen parental alienation as a straw that fathers are keen to offer and which professionals are eager to clutch. That is despite the fact that parental alienation does not exist in any credible medical guidance, is not a recognised syndrome, or a condition that can be formally diagnosed. The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has listed parental alienation syndrome as discredited. The Family Justice Council has also issued draft guidance on parental alienation, stating that instructed experts should be regulated and that 'parental alienation' is not a diagnosable condition or disorder. Yet, in my time as a family law barrister, I have seen it grow rather than diminish in significance. Academic research underlines quite how widespread a legal tactic this has become, weaponised against vulnerable women. In a University of Manchester study, published in September 2023, which assessed and interviewed 45 women who had been through family court proceedings in England after alleging domestic abuse, 39 had been accused of parental alienation. Those mothers described how allegations of alienation 'not only shifted the focus of proceedings once raised but also diminished and often completely sidelined the investigation of [domestic abuse] and child abuse'. Parental alienation is not just junk science and bad law. It is a symptom of how women are too often treated in the family justice system – pathologised, blamed and stripped of their rights. While it is true that one parent can negatively influence their children against the other, such cases are the exception. And they should always be matters of fact for the court to determine, not ones of spurious, quasi-medical diagnosis. Five years on from the original order that had taken her away from her mother, Florence had finally got what she had repeatedly asked for. But it had taken an unreasonable amount of struggling against the system for her to get there. Florence could never get back the years of her childhood she had lost with her mother or the time that she had dedicated to a personal legal battle that started when she was not yet a teenager. He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court, by Dr Charlotte Proudman (W&N, £20), is out on 1 May. Preorder now by clicking here
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- The Guardian
Decision to grant abusive partner access to daughter ‘alarming', UK court hears
A decision to allow a father contact with his daughter despite him having sexually abused, domestically abused and coercively controlled the mother is 'alarming', a court has heard. The allegations against the father, who is a member of the armed services, were found to have been proven on the balance of probabilities (the civil standard of proof) in a 2021 fact-finding judgment by the family court. But Charlotte Proudman, representing the mother, said in written submissions that the findings of fact 'have been put to one side and the focus has been on a 'pro-contact approach''. None of the parties in the case can be named. The mother is appealing a decision by the recorder Christopher Sharp KC in March in which he said the status quo with respect to the daughter's contact with her father should remain, despite a recommendation by the daughter's court-appointed guardian to reduce contact by ceasing overnight stays. The mother initially sought an order for a stay on contact or supervised contact with the father but then accepted the guardian's recommendations. She said in submissions: 'Despite such serious findings, contact was ordered to commence between [the daughter] and F [father] without a full risk assessment … The approach in this case has been nothing short of alarming. 'A [sexual abuse] victim ordered to promote contact with her [abuser]. At no stage has there been any consideration, nor any regard given to the impact of the profound sexual violence and abuse that I have suffered. Nor has there been any assessment as to whether F even accepts the findings, which is required.' She said that the father manipulates her daughter to be mean about her and 'exert control over me and cause me distress', adding that a cross-allegation of 'hostility' against her was victim-blaming 'for struggling to promote my [sexual abuser]'. Sharp also presided over the 2021 fact-finding judgment, but Proudman told Wednesday's hearing there had been a 'lack of engagement with any of the findings in 2021, which were of course very serious'. She said the father's behaviour was criminal, 'reprehensible and horrific' and added: 'The approach in this case has been nothing short of alarming.' The court heard that the mother had, at a hearing before a district judge in September last year, agreed to her eight-year-old daughter staying overnight with the father. She said she was 'coerced' into that contact agreement but Carl Geary, for the father, told the family division of the high court in London it was 'freely agreed' by the mother who then made an application to vary it and made fresh allegations against his client. He told the court the father accepted the 2021 findings but said in written submissions: 'F's position is that the decision was consistent with [the daughter's] welfare being the paramount consideration under section one of the Children Act 1989. 'M [mother] now seeks to depart from a position she previously agreed to, without identifying any material change in circumstances or new evidence of risk as between the time of her agreement and the imposition of the varied contact arrangements. It is F's case that the court made a careful, case-specific assessment of harm and benefit.' Mr Justice Peel said he expects to give judgment in the next few days.
