AIBU To think the Family Court is not fit for purpose?

[Notwiththeseknees]

The Judge has seen fit to name Ellie Yarrow, the mother who has fled with her three year old son. Reading the heartbreaking letter from Ellie that her sister posted on Facebook, AIBU to think that this secretive court who are responsible for some dreadful decisions, is no longer fit for purpose.

www.facebook.com/1311698241/posts/10216464513147988/

My friend reasons that it is better that her son is with her most of the time, in EOW contact and partial holidays, than to be removed from her care fully, that is why she complies.

Parent alienation DEFINITELY happens.

In this case we only have Dad’s word that this is what Ellie has done/is doing.

Likewise we only have Ellie’s words which detail abuse.

And yes I can fully see why she offered 50/50 access find it concerning that we have people on this thread who claim to work in family courts yet cannot seem to understand.WHY Ellie might have done so. That is a worry when it is known that abusive and controlling men will often use tactics that continue their abuse by declining it all and threatening to go for full custody

I don’t think anyone, father or otherwise, has claimed parental alienation in this specific case..?

Must admit I wouldn’t want to work in a family court.
Cases like this must be a nightmare,

I remember this thing happening several times before and the women receiving an awful lot of support on Mumsnet.

Samantha Baldwin running away with her two sons.

Rebecca Minnock running away with her son

Jennifer Jones disappearing with her four children in 2012.

The so called ‘Hampstead Satanic Abuse ring’.

All of these had quite some support on here and in all those cases it turned out that the stories the mother and their families were peddling did not bear much relation to reality.

And all the fathers in those cases could not give their side of the story because unlike the mothers they were abiding by the court’s decisions and respecting the confidentiality due to the children.

Given those cases I’m quite surprised that some I recognise as long term posters haven’t as yet discovered the value of being a little circumspect in these cases.

I’m not giving support to either side, but I do believe that the family courts operate in the best interests of the children most of the time and I take claims they are putting children in the sole care of violent mentally ill men with a large pinch of salt.

We are only getting one small partisan side of a very big story here.

Yes MissMalice, I have seen first hand with my friend, and heard similar accounts so it is really emotive. I agree, that there needs to be proper training of all judges working in the FC system, in DV, coercive control, and the different facets abuse can take. More education is needed.

So many of these problems have arisen from the change in the law to allow unmarried fathers automatic parental rights when on the birth certificate.

Imo PRR should only apply after marriage or a court application.

It would save so much heartbreak.

How have you come to that conclusion, Sarah? PR and contact don’t go hand in hand. Father’s are not routinely denied PR once paternity is confirmed. I suspect it would have made no difference in this case whatsoever.

I agree Aero. It’s a major failing.

Parent alienation DEFINITELY happens

Yes. And it is not new. I have had 35 years of daily suicide ideation thanks to my mother sounding (and still sounding) very credible.

She isn't an evil, awful mother. She was a very, very good mum until things went bent. She loved us. But she didn't handle conflict well. She wasn't equipped to maintain an even keel and not give in to ideas she thought made the playing field more even, or gave her the opportunity to stick two fingers up at my dad.

It was a impulsive lie. I could tell from her face it wasn't planned. But once that kind of genie is out of the bottle it is impossible to stuff back in. To take it back would have required her admitting to having made a terrible, terrible false accusation and the consequences of that would have been huge. So she found herself between a rock and a slightly less hard place. Which is why I think she ran with the lie as the least worst option. I think she and my father have paid a terrible price for their own and each other's shortcomings during the most conflictual years. Just not as bad as we kids have.

The damaged caused by parental alienation has caused so much misery to so many people in my family. The first accusation started a snowball effect and the already awful situation got many magnitudes worse. It happened in the mid 80s. Those of us still alive are still paying the price. The ones who are dead, died with the issues caused still unresolved. Which make grief very complicated.

We were once a normal, happy enough family. I know how we got so very far from that. I understand why. That let forgiveness come unforced. But none of that can undo what was done and the fall out from it. None of that stops my daily fight with the idea I need to die if I want to finally return to being free of the shame, pain and loss. None of that has stopped me missing the parents I had before it went so horribly, horribly wrong.

Good people in a tough spots can do awful things that in better times they had roundly condemned. Imagining they must be vanishingly rare, or confined to less than credible sounding accounts because the syndrome is limited to only the few truly evil or totally deluded people on the planet doesn't help them, and it certainly doesn't help their kids.

Parental alienation happens, it is real, it is not new, and the impact on the children is not negliable. The term coming into the public sphere and initially having a certain degree of acceptance as a concept has been very positive for me. It helped me make sense of what happened to us. Nothing has done more to reduce my sense of shame to more manageable levels.

Obviously professionals and lay people need to be aware of the potential for an abusive parent to claim PA to counter valid accusations. But at the same time I am unsettled that there seems to be a growing belief that PA can confidently and speedily rejected as a realistic possibility, even when precious little detail is known to the public.

It took so long to be recognised as a potential cause of a child's very evident distress. Kids who desperately need help will be the collateral damage if the term gets turned into a SM Outrage Inducing kind of hot potato that professionals become leery of including in their toolkit when assessing a family in crisis.

Cesira it sounds like an awful time for you with long term consequences.

My uncle’s ex wife did very similar although in her case we know from my cousins that she was also very very abusive. She told the children awful things about their Dad while subjecting them to physical abuse and neglect. Forty years on not one of them has forgiven her and none attended her funeral last year .
What they did have as adults was a wonderful relationship with their Dad until his death.
All three of my cousins are still living with the effects of their childhood and my eldest cousin says he can never forgive his mother (or “the witch” as he refers to her) for denying him an relationship with his Dad as a child.

@cerise sounds tough, what was the lie?

If you have a 90% chance even of a residence order in your favour but 100% if you run away you can see why some people go for the run away option.

The trouble is that if you want to come back, the fact that you ran away with your child will mean that that 90% chance has slipped pretty substantially.

I'm not familiar with this case but have experience of the family court through a close family member. I have sat in court hearings and many other meetings with social workers, school, CAFCASS.

Having seen what I've seen, if I ever found myself in anything approaching a situation with the family court, I would run. Regardless of how strong my case was and how ridiculous any claims were, I would run.

Sad but true.

Also the guardians are sometimes out of touch with reality in my experience.
When making recommendations to the court talking about things like the size of the bedroom is not sufficient, the rented house/refuge is insecure and not long term housing.
I mean many people have sma bedrooms and rent properties, or live in temporary accomodation. Things like this shouldn't be held against destitute women.

@Sarahandduck18 - you aren't forced as an unmarried woman to put the father on the birth certificate. You actually have to tell the father when the appointment is to register the birth so he can attend with you. If he doesn't attend he's not on the birth certificate and has to put in effort to claim his parental responsibility.

However if you are married your husband can make the appointment to register the birth and attend alone.

In my family the screw ups with names e.g. spelling, order, happen when the married men go alone to register the birth.

A very sad and complicated situation.

Oh god nailack my friends CARCASS guardian was awful, totally unprofessional and biased towards her ex, who my friend felt had feelings towards her ex. The guardian was supposed to take into consideration my friends ds feelings and wishes, but she had her own agenda, and totally dismissed them. Trying to get the judge to reverse residency from my friend which the judge dismissed, probably because her ex displayed very aggressive behaviour in the court and towards the judge.

My friend was one of the lucky ones, because her ex did not try to charm and manipulate the judge, and just lied and lied in court and the judge could see that. Yet he still awarded the ex contact despite himself seeing how he is like. But still the experience of the FC for her, left her shaken and disillusioned with the FC system.

In my experience women have t realised the pitfalls when they have decided to co register with unmarried dads. It is more of a commitment than marriage!

In the case of abusive men, it might actually be very difficult to register without them there if they know the legalities of the situation. And it's doesn't stop them being granted PR through the court.

"We are only getting one small partisan side of a very big story here."

And yet the BBC - on BBC London on Saturday night, gave a long section to the father - full sad face, dewey eyed reporting by the BBC on his plight, missing his young son.... They said the mother had left a letter, but mentioned not ONE of her allegations or reasons for leaving. No suggestion even that the letter was critical of the Dad, who was shown and interviewed looking cuddly and bereft.

I found that very disturbing. What right do the BBC have to make a partisan broadcast like that, clearly engineered by the Dad to effectively publicise a man hunt for her? They showed pictures of her.

YABU. The court has difficult decisions to make. There are two sides to every story, we will never know the true story. But someone needs to decide what's in the best interests of the child. Some fathers are bastards and will lie, manipulate and con their way to custody... But let's not kid ourselves that some mothers wouldn't do the same. Her writing a letter is fine, but doesn't make it any truer than his version.
I hope the child ends up with the best situation, and clearly someone else needs to decide what this is as the parents don't seem capable.

I found that very disturbing. What right do the BBC have to make a partisan broadcast like that, clearly engineered by the Dad to effectively publicise a man hunt for her? They showed pictures of her.

It wasn’t partisan. It was factual. They reported that the court order had been made and a search was underway. The father spoke about the search said he missed him and was finding it hard without him.

They did not air any allegations from him about the mother and her supposed behaviour nor information from her supporters about his behaviour. It was a brief, factual report which stuck to the information the court had authorised for release. It was a professional and ethical report. Reports on the letter she left have also been professionally and ethically reported on by the same outlets because they have only released short sections which centre around her feeling she is doing the right thing by Ollie by leaving with him and confirming she has gone - because that is an established fact the court has cleared for release. No reputable outlet has covered the full text of the letter and the allegations in it. No media outlet has covered any allegations the father may have made against Ellie except that she has gone missing with Olly because that is an established fact and the court has approved its release.

There are very clear and stringent rules about what can and can’t be reported by the media in cases like this but Ellie’s side are circumventing this by releasing information themselves via social media. That doesn’t come close to the father giving a brief interview commenting solely on information sanctioned for release by the court. What would be comparable is if his relatives or friends were using social media to spread unsubstantiated allegations about Ellie’s mental health or parenting or anything else.

This is the problem with cases like this, looking at the past similar ones Baldwin, Minnock, Jones, the Hampstead sex abuse allegations, the one about the Italian woman whose baby was supposedly snatched by SS: we really do get a distorted story when one party goes public via social media with information which shouldn’t legally be in the public domain yet everyone else is still having to abide by them.

I have absolutely no idea where the truth lies, neither does anybody else posting here. Even the authorities are quite clear that they don’t know either because the absence of Olly and his mother hasn’t allowed them to investigate properly.

Whatever the truth the professionals involved will have a hell of a lot more insight into the situation than a bunch of people on a forum.

Yes the family court is most definately NOT fit for purpose. I lost everything I had ever worked for and went through absolute hell trying to do what was right for my child through the family court system after being wrongly advised by solicitors.
I only received legal aid after selling my home using up all my equity on going from place to place 12x with my 2 children in 18 months, selling my home and although I had no income I did not qualify for legal aid until I was down to my last £500 , despite domestic violence being proven.
I was still left in masses of debt but after 7 yes 7 court hearings, having police alarms installed in my home , even conducting my own 2 day fact finding hearing against a bullying, psychopathic, cocaine addicted thug who initially charmed the CAFCASS Officer.
I am an ex professional who knew full well what was right for my child and until I got caught up in this system I had no idea of the punitive measures against the mother , yet total impunity to the father.

It is totally and utterly wrong and I would very much like to assist poor women who do not have the knowledge, intellect or strength to fight these cases and solicitors just bleed you dry , with very often misinformation or lack of conviction.

I won my case but I would literally shake uncontrollably having to be in his presence. Escorted to and fro court buildings due to intimidation. And I am a very strong person.
It is absolutely shocking the lack of protection for women in the family court . At one point in a hearing , the magistrates and legal assistant all adjourned to confer and left me entirely alone in a room with him , whilst I sat facing a wall terrified and rigid.
The entire process robbed me of 2 years of my life , at one point my children and I were homeless as I had no support apart from a kind friend renting us a bedroom for 6 weeks until I found us somewhere to rent. Where we have now been settled for 2 years, prior to that living in perpetual fear taking no on the fight of my life for my child, when the matter should have been dealt with in 3 months.
I applaud and feel so much for Ellie Yarrow. May her plight highlight the appalling inadequacies in this entirely flawed system and I hope she gets justice to raise her son peacefully, it doesn’t sound like the father is fit to have 50/50 contact.
It is not putting children’s interest first at all. To take the step of going on the run shows her desperation and I contemplated it several times but I had another child at a critical point in their education and had to prioritise that as well.
What goes on in those courts is beyond shocking ....
Domestic abuse, coercion & all its forms and subtleties should form part of the National Cirriculum , also the definitions thereof and the steps & advice women can take prior to even setting foot in the family court.