WAVE statement on the interconnection between violence against women and violence against children in child custody cases
An overview of the gender-bias and lack of understanding of the impact of DV in European courts.
Related topics
Coercive Control Literature Review
Coercive control in the context of domestic and family violence. Focus on Australia.
Coercive Control in children’s and mother’s lives
Drawing on interviews with children and mothers who have experienced coercive control-based domestic violence, this ground-breaking book sheds light on the impacts of coercive control on children, how it is perpetrators who must be held accountable for those impacts, and how resistance by children and mothers occurs. Resistance happens in everyday life, not just in response to incidents of violence. 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 supports and professional interventions that work.
The protection of children from violence in the context of intimate partner violence/domestic violence and custody & visitation
An overview of the international normative framework in relation to the protection of children from violence. It focuses on issues related to custody rights.
Published by WAVE: Women against Violence Europe Network
Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases
Final Report. MoJ 2020
This report provides an understanding of how effectively the family courts identify and respond to allegations of domestic abuse and other serious offences, in private law proceedings. Recommendations are made in relation to both the processes and the outcomes for parents and children, focusing on the Children Act 1989 which requires the welfare of the child to be prioritised.
Child Custody Outcomes in Cases Involving Parental Alienation and Abuse Allegations
The first goal of this project was to ascertain whether empirical evidence indicates that the concept of parental alienation is sex-biased in practice and outcome. Second, the study looked at outcomes in custody/abuse litigation by sex and by differing types of abuse. Analysis of over 2000 court opinions confirms that courts are sceptical of mothers’ claims of abuse by fathers; this scepticism is greatest when mothers claim child abuse. The findings also demonstrated that fathers’ cross-claims of parental alienation virtually doubled the courts’ rejection of these claims, and mothers’ losses of custody to the father accused of abuse.
Women in Private International Law
2019
There is little published research applying a feminist analysis to, or even considering the position of women in, private international law. This chapter establishes that the apparently gender-neutral nature of private international law conceals profoundly ingrained assumptions about gender. It then considers the gendered dimension of international family law, referring in particular to the regulation of international child abduction, international family property agreements, and international commercial surrogacy. It concludes that there remains a great need for further research into the position of women as legal subjects and law-makers in this field.