A powerful documentary featuring Sammie and Lydia, co-founders of the New Zealand Hague Collective which helps other protective mothers navigate this terrifying international law.
Their experiences were traumatic; their situations desperate. And yet the Hague Convention sent them back to their abusers. Their courage in sharing their stories, and their generosity in deciding to use their experience to help others, is beyond inspirational. We are proud to know them.
After a seven-year battle, Narkis Golan’s vulnerable son Bradley has been allowed to remain in the US with his loving aunt. It should not have been so hard for a protective mother to safeguard her child. The Hague Convention is not fit for purpose.
A powerful and insightful podcast from Neeta Misra’s ‘Matters’ platform with Lynn Hecht Schafran, Senior Vice-President of Legal Momentum, the Women’s Legal Defense & Education Fund.
Lynn and Neeta discuss the case of a Hague mother Narkis Golan whose case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2022, where she won. Tragically Narkis has since died (her death is under investigation) and the courts will now determine her son’s fate or whether he gets to stay with his family in the United States or is released into the custody of social services in Italy for supervised visitation with his father.
Thanks to Neeta for permission to share this podcast (and for joining the Hague Mothers team)
We speak with documentary filmmaker Jenny Wat who is a member of our Hague Mothers team.
Interview with Jenny Wat
Through her film ‘Home with my Children’ (watch the trailer here), Jenny is trying to raise awareness of the Hague Convention among mothers and safeguard mothers and children in abusive relationships.
We discuss the reason for the creation of the Hague Abduction Convention in 1980, how it fails to adapt to the 21st Century, and most importantly, how the system fails to protect children – which is supposed to be the very core of the Convention.
Expat mothers, whose child/ren and themselves are suffering from domestic abuse, are fighting against the legal system and the Convention at their habitual residence in order to return to their homeland with their child/ren (or reunite with them).
Contact hague@filia.org.uk if you can help Jenny – with funding ideas, industry contacts, or professional advice.
Transcript:
Ruth, coordinator of Hague Mothers, in conversation with documentary maker Jenny Watt.
Home with my children Jenny Watt.
Ruth: Hello, I’m Ruth and I’m the coordinator for Hague Mothers, which is a FiLiA Legacy project. We’re aiming to end the injustices caused by The Hague Abduction Convention, specifically for mothers fleeing domestic violence or coercive control. And today I am absolutely delighted to be joined by one of our volunteer members Jenny Watt, Welcome Jenny.
Jenny: Thank you, Ruth. Thank you for inviting me to the podcast and thank you for the introduction.
Ruth: Pleasure. So Jenny is an upcoming documentary director and she’s currently working on a film which highlights how the convention has utterly failed to protect children and mothers from domestic abuse.
We’ll put a link to the trailer for her film on our website. So to begin at the beginning, tell us a little more about yourself and how you came to be interested in the experiences of Hague mothers.
Jenny: Sure. Thank you. So I first came across Experiences for Hague Mothers by conducting research online on narcissistic personality because I was looking to do a movie about that due to my personal experience.
And then the research kind of got diverted into domestic abuse and The Hague Mothers and the children. And I was just absolutely shocked and horrified by what they went through in many of the so-called developed countries where the legal systems are supposed to be highly regarded and highly respected.
So I just decided to change direction of my research and my documentary, and focus my research on domestic abuse and The Hague Mothers and their children.
Ruth: What made you decide to make a film of their stories? Why did you feel that mothers’ actual voices were important?
Jenny: Because I want the world to hear what The Hague Mothers and their children have gone through and how the system has utterly failed to protect them.
Because a movie can create far greater impact in reaching much wider audience, which transcends all borders. And you can feel the emotions of the contributors because they’re literally in your face. Which means the audience are not just reading or hearing stories of an unrelated stranger from a national newspaper or on a national TV show because the targeted audience tend to be people from that particular country.
Whereas if you watch a movie and then you hear the voice of the mothers, the very courageous mothers and maybe their children, you can relate yourself to them. You know they’re real people because that can happen to you, your loved ones, your neighbours, your friends, relatives, people who you know and you love.
That’s why I decided to make a movie, record their voices and their stories.
Ruth: I understand that decision though I’m sure there were challenges along the way, but when they were telling those stories, Jenny, were there any common themes that were coming through?
Jenny: There is one major one, which is how the Hague judges have not taken evidence of abuse into very serious consideration.
And in Article 13 B of the 1980 Hague Convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction, it clearly states that a member state is not bound to order the return of the child if the person, institution, or other body, which opposes this return, establishes that there is a grave risk. That his or her return would expose a child to physical and psychological harm or otherwise place a child in an intolerable situation.
This happened across multiple jurisdictions from what I’ve gathered. From the legal perspective, I think it could be due to the fact that the evidence presented was not substantial, the victims were not able to back up the evidence with medical proof or from a third party professional.
However, I think one must remember that sometimes abuse happened at the very, very early stage of relationship without one realising it.
And it is extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly when the abuse actually happened, be it physical, mental, or psychological. I mean, there’s no CCTV recording and therefore the court, they might argue anecdotal evidence. And also on top of that the court might not have realised that many of these Hague mothers do not have the same rights of access to otherwise free services because they and the children are not PR [permanent residents] or citizens and are residents.
These mothers who’ve been abused, they’re trying to protect the children from the perpetrators while fighting multiple battles at the same time. Sometimes you know, something very basic like, you know, money for food and money for accommodation, money for school, medical fee, legal fee, et cetera which one might have taken for granted if you were a citizen or a PR.
So when the Hague mothers are at the court, they’re trying to present evidence of abuse. Not only are they completely traumatised by this very overwhelming legal experience because before they relocated they would have never, ever have thought that this will happen to them one day. They have never imagined that they and the children were abused. They have to go through this lengthy process, not to go home. So they’re exhausted. They’re confused, and therefore the judges quite often would just dismiss them as being unreliable for providing inconsistent evidence.
At this moment, I believe only they have a guardian ad litem system where they would take evidence from children involved, evidence gathered from the children, seriously, and they would present them in court.
But I believe that this is not a common practice across all jurisdictions who have a signed up to this convention, so in conclusion, what are The Hague mothers supposed to do?
Ruth: So you’re facing a number of challenges. So what’s your aim? What do you hope to gain from making the film?
Jenny: My main goal is to raise awareness because not many people are aware of the existence of the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention until it hits them and then by then it is far too late, so that’s my main goal.
Ruth: And you’ve been self-funding the work to date, so what stage are you at so far?
Jenny: So, the trailer was filmed in Singapore, so I have filmed quite a number of Hague mothers in Singapore.
I’ve also been to quite a number of countries in Western Europe as well to do the filming because I’m currently based in the UK. So in terms of travel it’s just much easier that way. The next stage is to look for funding to complete the rest of my documentary.
I have completed a budget proposal and most of the funding will cover the transportation and subsistence trips and stuff like that because I need to fly to Australia and New Zealand where a lot of my contributors are based. I mean, this is not a Western European or American issue. This is a global issue. It happens everywhere in a lot of places across different jurisdictions. So yes, that would be great.
Ruth: Okay, so funding, what else do you need? Is there anything else people can do to help?
Jenny: Yes, as many stories as possible because I’m still in the process of collecting stories from Hague mothers who are the primary caretakers of the children who have been domestically abused and whose situations have been ignored by the police and social workers and have been sent a Hague petition.
So still collecting stories and also industry contacts would be great. I am the only person working on this documentary at the moment. So any alternative angle will be great and a producer would be good.
I think I need like just a third pair of eyes just to look through things and just provide a different angle and advise, that would be great.
Ruth: So if all goes well, as I’m sure it will, and you get the support you need. what’s your dream outcome?
Jenny: My dream outcome is to raise awareness. That every time when people want to relocate with their children or are thinking of bringing up their children in another country, they will think twice before doing that.
Because by raising enough awareness, changes can happen just like the Me Too movement. And secondly, my dream outcome would be to make sure that all the Hague judges, they must take evidence of abuse and Article 13 B into very, very serious consideration. They must have empathy. They need to understand that the mothers, they’ve been traumatised, they’ve been abused, they go through multiple battles and processes, they need to understand where they’re coming from.
They just want to go home, return home with their family, and not to be returned to the perpetrators. Just like how you would deal with a local domestic abuse case where you would not return a victim back to the perpetrators.
Just remove the whole Hague, remove the relocation. It is really that simple.
You just do not return the victims back to the perpetrators. Full stop.
So my ultimate aim by doing this documentary is to protect the mothers and the children, so it will not happen again.
Ruth: Thank you so much, Jenny, for your work on this project and for your support for Hague mothers generally. And could I ask people who are listening to this podcast please to watch the trailer, pass it on to others.
And if you can help Jenny in any way with ideas for funding resources, with industry contacts, or if you are a Hague mother or about to be a Hague mother who has a story to tell. Please get in touch with us in the first instance @hague.filia.org.uk. Thank you once again, Jenny, for all you’re doing to help mothers in this situation.
Jenny: Thank you for your help and support, Ruth. Thank you.
Author’s Note: I wrote “Reflections on the Thai Cave Rescue” in an attempt to describe the plight of women entrapped by abusive male partners. I was unaware at the time of writing that the multilateral Hague Convention is one of the most powerful mechanisms being used to push women deeper into the cave. The Hague Convention is being used all over the world to exert extraordinary and unjust powers over women daring to flee male control and violence. It comes as no surprise that abused mothers who risk life and limb to protect their children are being captured and returned by the state to the jurisdiction of their abusers, their heroic actions to preserve their children’s lives reframed in patriarchal logic as the crime of abduction.
I’m driving home from a back-alley meeting with a young immigrant woman being beaten by her husband. As always after such meetings I’m feeling a bit depressed. I switch on the radio. There’s good news out of Thailand. Every last one of those kids trapped in the flooded cave has been rescued. The plight of the luckless soccer team has dominated the news for weeks and it seems the whole world is rejoicing.
It’s the summer of 2018. The 12 boys and their coach became entrapped after sudden torrential rains flooded the cave they were exploring. Continuous rains, rising floodwaters and strong currents hampered rescue efforts, and hope was running out. But support poured into Thailand from around the world, with at least 15 countries and 10,000 people participating in the complex and dangerous rescue. Nine hundred police officers, 2,000 soldiers, 100 divers and 100 governmental agencies took part. International cave divers, Thai Navy Seals, helicopters, drones, robots and sniffer dogs were employed. By the seventeenth day, the entire team had been saved. Massive goodwill and heroics had achieved the impossible.
I shed a few tears myself—but my mind is elsewhere. I can’t help thinking about all the women around the world trapped in abusive homes and marriages with no hope of rescue. I can’t help thinking about who gets rescued and who doesn’t.
The woman I’ve just met is in a perilous situation too, but there will be no massive outpouring of sympathy on her behalf, no coordinated effort to save her. In fact, no one will come for her at all. Valiantly though she will try to navigate the rising floodwaters, clawing her way over every obstacle thrown in her path, she will find the exits consistently blocked.
Our connection is remote. She’s the neighbour of a friend of a friend. Recently she knocked on her neighbour’s door, lifted her shirt and revealed her bruising. The neighbour didn’t know what to do so asked her friend. The friend didn’t know what to do so asked me, knowing I have many years’ experience helping women escape violent marriages.
We meet at a location her husband would not suspect. She has her two kids with her. The older one plays quietly as we talk. A new-born sleeps peacefully in her arms.
She tells me her story. She entered marriage as naively as the boys entered the cave—lured by its promises, oblivious to its dangers. Her husband was kind in the beginning, and when he received a job offer in Canada she followed him hopefully, but soon he revealed a different side. He began to control and demean her and treat her like a servant. He confiscated her phone, denied her access to the computer, prohibited her from driving; forced himself upon her.
Soon there were two children, his tirades turned to rages, and he began to beat her. She has grown increasingly depressed and longs to return to her family and raise her kids in peace. She told her husband she wants out of the marriage.
‘You are free to go,’ he replied. ‘But you are not taking the children.’
With these words, she has become entrapped. The rains begin. It will rain and rain and rain until the entire system is flooded, blocking her way out.
It’s not just that she cannot prove his cruelty, nor that she lacks the financial resources to fight back. It’s that society, police, courts and child protection agencies will throw their support and resources behind him, his rights, his freedoms.
___
The baby advises his mother it is lunch time. She nurses him lovingly as she asks my guidance, her face lined with fear. How can she free herself from this soul-destroying marriage? Can she return to her family and raise her kids in peace?
I take a deep breath. Like a doctor about to deliver bad news I know what I have to say will make her more afraid, but I stopped giving battered mothers false hope the day I recognized that nothing will be done to actually free them from their partner’s tyranny. No judge in this country will allow a woman to take her kids and move away contrary to the father’s wishes, no matter how brutally she has been treated.
Canadian courts place a high priority on maintaining men’s contact with their kids. While this might seem like a good idea on the face of it, what it means in practice is that men’s rights to their children take precedence over the health, rights and freedoms of the women they have brutalized.
It means that a man can torture, confine and surveil his partner, even threaten her with death, and still control her after separation. Abused women are forced, ‘for the sake of the children’, into ongoing contact with their batterers. They continue to live in fear of the ex-partner’s next move, of being assaulted on access visits, of harm befalling their children. Wounds inflicted in the marriage never heal because the violence and threat has not ended, kept alive by court order.
She burps the baby and switches him to the other side.
‘Maybe I can go home for a visit and just not come back,’ she says.
I explain that, like a slave tethered to her master, she can make a run for it, but eventually she will be caught and returned, and the courts tend to be very punitive with mothers who take action without or in spite of the court’s direction.
‘I am trapped,’ she says.
‘Yes, you are,’ I say.
—-
I’m not saying we do nothing for battered mothers. We’re prepared to help them cope, adapt, hide and so on. We give them shelters, safety plans, personal alarms, self-defence courses. We’re prepared to help them cope. We’re just not prepared to free them.
When she was a child, American suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton took scissors to the law books in her judge father’s library, cutting out all the passages that made women cry. Her father explained that cutting out the texts would not remedy the evils she complained about. What was needed was new laws.
I give the woman the usual contact information for shelters, lawyers and supports. But as a feminist counsellor, I also give her a crash course in sociology. I explain that we live in a patriarchy, a system of government where men hold the power and women are largely excluded from decision-making. Millions of women on the planet are in the same boat as her, trapped with their children in abusive marriages with no hope of getting free so long as the laws favour men.
The first step in any woman taking back her power is to recognize that the limits placed on her life are unjust; that the laws that limit her freedom are man-made and can and must be challenged and changed.
I switch off the radio, pondering how the world came together magnificently to save 12 imperilled boys and their intrepid coach. If we’ve learned anything from Thailand, it’s that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Could we care enough about women caught in violent relationships to actually free them and their children from further pain and suffering?
___
Our first Canadian project member, Donna has trained judges in responding to violence against women; worked in the crisis unit of a police service; taught feminist practice at Carleton University; spoken at international conferences; and published many articles describing the plight of women navigating a justice system determined to keep them in their place.
Last December, the Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus amended domestic law in response to growing evidence of the weaponization of the Hague Abduction Convention by abusive fathers. The new regulations state that allegations of domestic violence can be considered under the ‘grave risk’ defence, and that it does not have to be proven in order to be taken in to account. These initial changes are part of a ‘commitment to effective accessible, fair and safe family law that supports victim-survivors of family and domestic violence’.
The changes are not, however, retrospective.
Shortly after the Attorney-General’s press release, a 2-year-old indigenous Australian child was taken from her protective mother and given to her abusive father – who she barely knows. The mother was refused leave to appeal against the return order.
Yesterday we wrote on behalf of the international Hague Mother’s Project to ask that you urgently intervene to protect an indigenous Australian mother and her two-year-old daughter.
Since writing we have been contacted by a number of international experts who are working in this field and in related areas of domestic violence, child protection, child development and human rights. They have asked us to add their names to this renewed request.
As you are aware, under the Hague Abduction Convention, a return order has been granted to the mother’s abusive ex-partner. The order has been made in spite of the fact that her former partner has made threats to kill both her and her child, and that he has an ADVO against him. It also ignores the significance of the child’s indigenous heritage: the ex-partner is European and has no connection with, and no interest in, that heritage.
Had your recent, welcome, changes to the Convention been retrospective, it is very likely that the judgment in this case would have been decided differently, and that both mother and child would have been protected by the Australian judicial system.
Instead, the mother is now facing the ‘choice’ of giving up her child to his violent father, or attempting to return to Europe with her daughter and facing further, potentially life-threatening, abuse, and economic hardship.
We call upon you to urgently intervene. If the return order is implemented there is a clear and profound risk of physical and psychological harm to both mother and child.
We realise that an intervention is not straightforward. However, in all conscience, this judgment cannot be allowed to stand.
Yours sincerely
Dr Adrienne Barnett (UK), Reader in Law, Brunel Law School
Lisa Blakemore-Brown (UK), HCPC Regulated Practitioner Educational Psychologist
Yvette Cehtel (Aus), CEO, Women’s Legal Service Tasmania
Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno (UK), Founder and Chair SHERA Research Group
Michelle Dörendahl (Aus), Law clerk & advocate for women escaping violence
Ruth Dineen (UK), International Coordinator, Hague Mothers
Samantha Fill (New Zealand), Co-founder, New Zealand Hague Collective
Anita Gera (UK), Co-founding Trustee, Hague Convention Mothers
Louise Godbold (US), Executive Director Echo Training, #MeToo Silence Breaker
Janine Hendry (Aus), Spokesperson, Her Hague Story
Dr Rima Hussein (UK), Assistant Professor, Northumbria University
Sally Jackson (UK), Violence Against Women Lead, FiLiA
Donna F. Johnson (Canada), Domestic Violence Counsellor
Dr Emma Katz (UK), Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth, Liverpool Hope University
Miranda Kaye (Aus), Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UTS
Anna Kerr (Aus), Principal, Feminist Legal Clinic
Dr Gina Hope Masterton (Aus), Research Fellow, QUT Centre for Justice
Ali Morris (UK), VAWG social worker, trainer & consultant
Lydia Randall (New Zealand), Co-founder, New Zealand Hague Collective
Rosa Saladino (Aus), Principal, Hague Convention Legal Practice
Kathleen Simpson (Aus), Principal, Domestic Violence & Family Lawyer, Queensland
Lisa-Marie Taylor (UK), CEO, FiLiA
Dr Katarina Trimmings, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Aberdeen University
Breffni Wahl (US), Director, The Hague Collective
No intervention has been forthcoming.
On Christmas day, the child was flown to Belgium to live with her abusive father.
We will continue to support the mother in whatever way we can, and to bring pressure on the Australian Government to ensure the safety and well-being of the child who has been put in serious danger by this Hague Convention decision.
If you would like to help, a Go-fund-me appeal has been set up to assist the mother’s legal battle to bring her daughter home.
A story from the front line, republished with the kind permission of the author Sarah Marie, and the Centre for Women’s Justice.
Sarah Marie is a Hague mother who is fighting for justice – for herself and other mothers who are caught up in the nightmare of the Hague Abduction Convention. Her eloquence at the FiLiA Conference was profoundly moving.
As I boarded the flight to London, I could feel the bile rising in the back of my throat. This was the first time I had dared to venture more than a few hours from my New England home – never mind cross another international border. But my fate was sealed. I had to meet my sisters. I had just lost one sister days before stepping on the plane. At 32 years old, Narkis Golan, a strong, vibrant mother and fighter for systematic change of the broken system, was found dead with no rational explanation in her Brooklyn, NY apartment.
Just days before we had talked on the phone. When I told Narkis that my lawyer had given me the green light to fly, she was elated and wished she could go with me to read her speech at the Hague Mother’s symposium at FiLiA. Despite my fears and worries that I would be apprehended by US Marshals at gunpoint at the gate, I pushed forward. If I did get stopped, it wouldn’t be the first time I had been failed by the misogynistic police system or had been arrested violently. The last time I saw my children was the night the Mounties put a loaded gun to my head in a Canadian Air B&B, and I found myself charged with 2 felony accounts (facing up to 10 years in prison) for ‘abducting’ my own children, fleeing domestic violence perpetrated against both myself and my two young sons. It’s now been three years since I’ve seen or been allowed any type of contact with my boys.
Narkis was like many of the selfless women I had met who had fled abuse to protect her son and was the first ‘Hagued’ mother I had met. She was fighting a very black-and-white set of barbaric international laws which necessitate that a child, who has been relocated from one country to another, must be returned back to the borders of their ‘habitual residence’, often regardless of the circumstances.
Hague Abuse
In 1980 a multilateral Hague Convention treaty was amended by the existing members of the international law community, to add in a provision related to child abduction. According to the Hague Conference on Private International Law‘s (HCCH) official website, this provision was added: ‘to protect children from the harmful effects of wrongful removal and retention across international boundaries’.
Although the act was originally intended to prevent one parent from using international borders as a means of influencing parental contact, much of the current research has found that a disproportionately high number of cases are women fleeing ‘life-threatening violence’. In many such cases men have weaponized the Hague, using its filing as a means of coercive control; essentially shackling the woman and her child(ren) to whichever country she/they had been trapped in a cycle of abuse in. Research from a 2015 HCCH study estimated over 73% of the parents charged in Hague custody hearings (essentially international kidnapping) are women, and that ‘the overwhelming majority of grave risk cases involve the mother leaving family violence situations as the taking parent’. One of five, poorly defined, legal arguments which might be used by the mother in opposition to the return of her child under the Hague Convention treaty is the ‘grave risk of harm exception’. Used as an objection (and not the gold medal standard), a court may refuse to grant the return of the child if it causes ‘physical harm’, ‘psychological harm’, or otherwise places the child in an ‘intolerable situation’.
Failure to more succinctly define these risks, has led to a myriad of interpretations of the law depending on what court and country the case lands in. Because these outlines are so lacking, the best interest of the child (or in Narkis’ case the mother’s safety and well-being as well) is not always considered. In many cases, the father’s ‘habitual residence’, that the child should be automatically returned to their home country, is given more weight in family court than the protection of individuals.
“Being Hagued invariably puts the mother back in the father’s country—frequently without familial, social, financial or legal support—providing a perfect context for continued violence,”
In 2022 Globalarrk, a charity created to help study and support parents in international custody disputes and Hague custody cases, affirmed ‘courts need to accept the body of research which states that children are harmed both physically and psychologically by domestic abuse. It should be deemed intolerable for a child to have to live with any form of violence including psychological, verbal, financial, sexual, or coercive control’.
To date, over ONE HUNDRED countries around the world have entered into this horribly flawed agreement, in many cases putting women and children in harm’s way.
Narkis
Narkis had been living in her home country of the US for years when she was served with a Hague notice. The courts had ordered the return of both her and her child back to Italy. There she and her son – who did not speak the language – would be confined to the perimeters of the country where her abusive ex had powerful ties and connections and she had no family or resources. Italy would become their cage and their keeper until her son reached a legal age where he could decide for himself.
Narkis’ story was a beacon of light for so many of us who had been without hope for so long. It brought us together; sisters in solidarity from around the globe who had all been subjected to this plague called the Hague, many of whom I would be meeting for the first time in Cardiff. Narkis who had planned to attend virtually would not be there. The news of her death weighed heavy on our minds.
As the plane began to take off from the tarmac, the fear began to settle and the grief set in. My strong, amazing friend was gone, and all I had left of her were her words of encouragement to keep fighting for my sons ‘like hell’ and the speech in my hands she had written right before her death. She had passed the torch and it was my turn to be brave; to be extraordinary. I needed to stand tall and demand our rights as mothers. I would ask the world to stand with us. I would raise the flag of awareness that would break the glass ceiling and bring change to these barbaric laws.
Narkis, I did make it to Cardiff like I promised you I would. I read your amazing speech with courage. Your sisters are still standing and fighting fiercely in your honor.
Wonderful news – Hague Mother Angelique Ferra has won her case! Please share widely. The more people who know about the injustices of the Convention, the stronger our voices become.
Coercive control is a severe form of domestic violence experienced by millions of children worldwide. It involves a perpetrator using a range of tactics to intimidate, humiliate, degrade, exploit, isolate and control a partner or family member. Some coercive control perpetrators use violence, others do not. Breaking free from coercive control is not a one-off event but a sustained battle for safety and recovery in which child and adult survivors need support and professional interventions that work.
Emma Katz’s research has the potential to revolutionise our understanding of how children are affected by coercive control-based domestic violence. Emma is working with us on the Hague Mothers’ legacy project and we are immensely grateful for her time and expertise.
By Natalie Page, founder of #thecourtsaid campaign and director of the Survivor Family Network. The original blog post was published on the main FiLiA website.
The Family Court presides over 55,000 child arrangements cases a year in England and Wales, many of which are likely to be disastrously mishandled when it comes to domestic abuse. The Court struggles to recognise and understand violence towards women and children.
Children are acutely aware of their abuser’s tactics and patterns. They are not passive observers.[i] Children living with abuse know they live with it, even if they cannot articulate it with adult words. Indeed, children who live with domestic abuse show levels of emotional, behavioural and trauma symptoms comparable to the sixty-two per cent of children who are direct victims of an abusive parent.
Dr Emma Katz, Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth at Liverpool Hope University, explains: “When children have a coercive control perpetrator in their lives, the trauma they experience is extreme. An event is traumatic when we fear for our safety and know ourselves to be in danger. But children living with coercive control aren’t just experiencing ‘events’, it is worse than that: their whole everyday life is fundamentally unsafe, and they are in a fearful state 24/7.”
Children living in fear inherit an adverse health legacy. Research shows an increased risk of poor mental health[ii] and higher levels of fear and anxiety[iii]. Domestic abuse impacts every aspect of an adult’s life, the same for children. No area is left untouched for a child, whether that is their health or their ability to self-express, friendships and interpersonal relationships, or their fulfilment in education. Children’s abuse trauma is palpable when they haven’t yet mastered speech. Even very young children show visible signs of trauma.[iv] So why does the court fail to see it?
Mothers and children subjected to abuse are often told by their abusers that they will lose the children in court if they leave. It should be an empty threat that would be doomed to failure. After all, what professional would hand a visibly frightened child to a known abuser in their right mind?
There is currently a statutory presumption in law that children should have contact with both parents. This is the best thing for children and parents with no abuse alleged. However, children do not need contact with a parent who is likely to harm them. The presumption means that when applied In abuse cases, it looks like a throwback to historical laws which established that women and children are the chattels of men. Most victims say they didn’t know they’d be treated like property until they tried to protect their children from an abusive father.
The Court says you should remain fully connected because fathers’ rights to contact are regarded as holy and immutable. With depressing regularity, an abuser’s desire for proximity to their victims is positioned as more important than children’s rights to live free from abuse. The notorious pro contact culture of the Family Courts has created fertile ground for treacherous new obstacles for victims leaving abuse.
Predominantly mothers report being confronted with what the Ministry of Justice admits is a culture of disbelief in the Family Court. Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, Lecturer in Health Care Sciences at the University of Manchester who chairs the SHERA research group, said, “research shows professionals trained in parental alienation are more likely to label mothers as lying about abuse, labelling real child abuse as non-existent or as ‘parental alienation’. As the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail.”
This ferocious courtroom culture leads to widespread failings for those seeking the Court’s protection. Globally, and in startling correlation with rising rates of misogyny, mothers are increasingly stigmatised and losing care of their children after reporting abuse. The most common tactic is when an abusive (usually) father accuses their victim of ‘parental alienation’.
Advocates of the fringe theory, such as expert witnesses on the lucrative Court circuit, say that there is rarely a reason for a child to reject a parent unless it’s pathological. It’s nonsensical that when one in three women are subjected to abuse, societally, we struggle to acknowledge its prevalence, existence and impacts. The number one cause of an abuse allegation is abuse. Yet, mothers and children leaving abuse find the professionals hearing about it are likely to believe anything rather than acknowledge that it happened.
Serious concerns have arisen about the growing trend of alleged abusers hiring ‘parental alienation’ expert witnesses in Family Court. Often unregulated, insufficiently qualified, or even both – they are hired to silence abuse allegations. As life and law are inextricably linked, they have shaped professional and public opinion against abuse victims.
What happens when a child reports abuse by a parent under these conditions? When the lens of ‘parental alienation’ is applied, experts tend to view allegations of abuse as automatically false. The cause of the allegation is attributed to a vague, psychological strategy usually said to be coming from the mother. Professionals indoctrinated by this thinking don’t say to the child who is reporting being harmed, ‘how can we keep you safe?’ Instead, they say, ‘your mother put you up to saying this.’ Children forced into the arms of their abusers are paying the price.
So-called ‘parental alienation’ theory is thoroughly discredited, having been deemed a dangerous pseudoscience that has been banned in parts of the world and rejected by entire professions. Inexplicably it is enjoying a sinister revival as a failsafe courtroom rebuttal to abuse, thanks to orchestrated men’s rights lobbying. In the age of information, the facts of its woeful credentials, the rejection of the scientific community, and its infamous reputation for causing injustice and injury to already vulnerable mothers and children have escaped the court. The chilling truth for children is that once they report abuse, they are more likely to be forced into the care of their abuser, with sometimes fatal consequences.
We know the FiLiA network does fantastic things. You can help create safer futures for survivor families. Click here to write to your MP to urge them to protect adult and child abuse victims by removing the statutory presumption of parental contact and banning the use of ‘parental alienation’ theory today. Feel free to link to this article. You can download a PDF to attach here.
