The Family Court Scandal and Abuse

[SpringMum30]

Wasn't sure what to post this under:

Women who are victims of domestic abuse are made by authorities to leave their abusers or risk losing their children.

Women who are victims of domestic abuse are made by the family courts to coparent with their abusers or risk losing their children.

The family court system is not fit for purpose. Women are re traumatised during proceedings whereby they are forced to face their abuser, are further gaslit by Cafcass and magistrates and forced to push their children into unsafe contact arrangements.

The court want to handle cases as quickly as possible and women are criticised for raising allegations of abuse as this prolongs the court process.

The abuser uses the court to further their abuse through the children and is not held accountable for their harmful and abusive behaviour.

If you can relate to this then I am sorry. The trauma experienced can trigger ptsd, anxiety and depression to name a few. I don’t know how to change the system but in raising awareness and talking about it I hope it’s a move in the right direction for real change.

Forgive me, I don't know how to quote your most recent comment but children don't always speak up because they are victims themselves and may not be aware of the abuse. Particularly where there is coercive control it takes a long time for a woman to identify that abuse even exists. What more for a child! The mother (in most cases) however has experienced the abuse and can now identify the abuse of the children. I was deeply offended by my ex's claims that I was using the children to further my case. They are genuinely my priority and I would have rather 'lost' the case then use them as a pawn.

My understanding, from reading academic research, is that the level of false claims of abuse in the family courts is actually very low .

And I have to say I wouldn't stay in a relationship with a man whose ex accused him of abuse. Because I actually don't think the research backs up the assumptions on here that women are making it up.

Also I am shocked by people claiming to be school staff who are demonstrating horrific bias on here. I hope they are falsely claiming to be work in safeguarding, otherwise they are in the wrong job. It took months of skilled therapy for my son to find the courage to open up about what his dad had been doing. A few chats with someone who assumes all mums alleging abuse are using their children as "pawns" would never have got to the bottom of it

I think it may just depend who is better at 'charming' the social workers and psychologists. It seems that sometimes the man is favoured and sometimes the woman. In my experience, a lot of social workers are very easily manipulated by the abuser. Then when the one who has been abused comes across as angry and traumatised, they are accused of being the abusive one.

IME many women go to great lengths to protect the children from the abuse. Good to know that those natural protective instincts work against you when it comes to being believed by school safeguarding.

😔😔

A now adult friend of mine who lived in an abusive household said to me that when she went to see counsellors or when the school spoke to her about her behaviour (trauma related) she wouldn't tell them what was happening as she feared they would take her and her sibling away from their mum, which was likely to be honest.

OP… hear fucking hear! 👏I lived out your perfect description of family court 18 years ago with DC1 and now again, these past 18 months with DCs 2 and 3 (ex number 2…stopping with the whole marriage experience after this shitshow).

Let me tell you what happened one year ago when I went to remove PR from my ex (who is serving a prison sentence for sexually abusing my daughter starting when she was 3 years old): Not only did the judge mock me, he wanted to slap a PSO on me, confiscate my passport, and referred to me as a ‘flight risk’. The removal of PR was absolutely not going to happen. Never mind that I’ve lived in the UK for 25 years, own my home, and have children in school and uni here. I’m just going to ‘flee’. I’d have every right to, if I’m honest. But I was never going to abscond with my children.
I said to the judge, ‘If I were planning on fleeing with my kids, I wouldn’t be here in front of you. I wouldn’t bother appealing to the court for help. I wouldn’t pay a fine fee applying to the court for permission to remove PR from a sexual abuser.’

It took me one year and a female judge to remove PR from my daughter’s abuser. I’m left traumatised by the whole experience. I still have the divorce to finish, which has been awful.

Having dealt with police, judges, lawyers all I can say is, this is no country for women and children. The investigating officer on our child abuse case was absolutely misogynistic to the core. I’m not sure what’s worse, the abuse my daughter suffered or the quest for ‘justice’. Justice… it’s a loose term. You lose so much of yourself, it costs you so much spiritually and emotionally, just to fucking claw to your children’s rights and your protection of them.

@TheVanguardSix I am so so sorry this is the treatment you got via the court system. Was an arrogant, awful judge. Why did he want to give you a PSO? Was that to stop you leaving the country? It's appalling you were treated like that.

Right! And the abusers now have another tool to further that abuse and control with even more intensity. The gaslighting becomes even worse because you are being told by 'professionals' that you are wrong too. Thankfully there are a lot of resources out there with people who have had similar experiences that really help ground and validate the truth. I spent a lot of time listening to YouTube videos of women with similar experiences, and it was interesting to see how similar the tactics of the abusers are within the court room

I was made by Caffcass to sit in a room next to the man who raped me, I also had to hand ds over to him for contact. This was the man who had tried to burn down the house with me & ds in it, if ds hadn't learned to ring 999 in school I don't know what would have happened.

I take your point, but I seriously think it’s almost impossible for a child to be able to voice their experience of, say, emotional abuse unless it’s unbelievably heavy handed.

there are plenty of plausible, professional and charming abusers who do deeply damage their children (and the other parent). But if it takes an adult many years to understand what’s happening to them I don’t think there’s much chance a six year old will see it.

Plus using the children to further abuse of their mother is a real thing and the ultimate negative effect of that on the children is also real.

I understand if the bar is “will this child die at their abuser’s hands? Are they in imminent physical danger?” and I understand schools can’t be responsible for everything - a line has to be drawn somewhere. But it seems to me that characterizing accusations of abuse as fantasies/completely unfounded on the basis of a young child’s word is quite unfair and naive in itself.

It also underlines one of the failings inherent in the system as it currently stands, which is that the definition of criminal abuse has widened, but the resources and expertise needed to understand and appropriately handle anything beyond physical violence is severely lacking.

As a result many women are thrown back on their own internal resources to navigate these situations and relationships as best they can, at the very point maven those resources are at their lowest ebb. This can mean staying when they don’t want to just to avoid impossible choices in the legal system. It’s sad to know that in this scenario reaching out to schools might well just result in safeguarding assuming you’re a liar, partly because there just isn’t anything they can do to help.

@TheTheVanguardSix I'm so sorry that you and your daughter went through that hell, what on earth do you have to do to have PR removed by a judge? More and more I think this country is full of and judged by women hating, paedophile enabling bastards.

How do you know the claims are false? How can you know? You do know abuse isn't just physical, don't you?

I'm a DSL, my full time job is knowing and spotting types of abuse and harm.

How do i know the most claims against ex's are false? Because I speak to the child.

One in the week before we broke up involved Mum escalating from school to MASH to police, in a desperate attempt to move 15yo away from resident father. Mum started pushing school to make a MASH referral, claiming emotional abuse in Dads home. I spoke repeatedly to the child who gave zero indication of this in discussions. Mum then made a MASH referral herself. Social care spoke to child and closed. She then went to police. They spoke to child and took no action. Then MASH again, this time claiming threats of violence and alcohol use ftom Dad, as well as emotional abuse. Again no disclosure from child - but in this case I (school DSL) pushed social care for an assessment with concerns of mum's emotional abuse. They assessed, talked at length to child, as did I - still no signs, suggestions or disclosure from the child of harm from Dad - so social care closed. This child is telling me eloquently and directly that her relationship with Dad is just normal teen-parent relationship. But mum continually insists that Dad occasionally telling her off, Dad insisting she washes the pots, or Dad having a couple pints on a weekend (child is 15) is emotional abuse. Like anything other than Perfect Parent (which doesnt exist) is labelled abuse and Ex considers that de-facto that they should have custody.

This is just one of dozens I deal with week in - week out.

I am a victim of domestic abuse, my children have been victims of domestic abuse.
I have stood in court for two years and not swayed from this once.
We spent years with me being gaslit, coercively controlled and financially abused.
Now I am divorced I am financially controlled via child maintenance and abused through the family courts.
I am frustrated to fuck by the Courts and Cafcass.

The last thing I would have needed was a member of staff at the kids school deciding that with no real experience of DV and only minor training on it, that I must be lying because the kids don’t quite back up what I say.

As an aside, I was raped one night by my exh. The children were in bed. Does the fact they didn’t see it and couldn’t have verified it mean it didn’t happen??? 🤔

Also I am shocked by people claiming to be school staff who are demonstrating horrific bias on here

I hope posters remember that people can claim anything and have their own bias and it doesn't stop them from asking support from schools/DSP's for themselves of their children.

We had kids that would swear till the cows come home nothing ever happened, even we knew it happened because the dad admitted it.

I guess sometimes people see what they want to see (especially when it goes against research and statistics) and two of those (allegedly) work in schools.

@Polik In all fairness though, my DSS had been coached by mum to say his dad was abusing him and he stuck to that story like it was rehearsed. There was no truth in it which is why I don't think listening to the child is always appropriate. They may just be scared to speak the truth.

@PoPolik are you a trauma informed trained counsellor? That one case may be false but I find it rather arrogant to say 'I'm trained to spot abuse' and we know that false claims to the point of escalation to police are rare, so how come you see many many cases of false abuse claims? Do you think that as others have said that children may not want to disclose or cannot articulate the abuse?

And no examples of kids that go to dad's that have no business being in charge of a pet rock (at best, at worst they are actually abusive) much less a child? Lucky you...

Reasonable point.

In all fairness though, it's not my role to interpret what the child says or why. That's the role of social care (and sometimes police). All a school does is offer opportunities to disclose and then report any disclosures to disclosure care to assess.

Yes, this was my experience too.

I had audio evidence of the abuse against my son and myself. The Magistrate's wouldn't listen to it despite it being properly submitted and allowed into evidence. The female Magistrate said twice during our hearing "why would we be interested in something that happened two years ago". I asked for an appeal.

I had to have a Non Molestation Order in place but it was only granted for six months.

The Judge at the appeal stood
CAFCASS down despite them voicing concerns in writing to the court about not having a fact finding and the serverity of the abuse. Our CAFCASS officer did listen to all the audio evidence. They had no courses to offer as the Domestic Violence Perpetrators course stopped being offered three months before our hearing with no alternative provision so the Judge said there was no point in them partaking in our hearing.

The Judge listened to two minutes of the audio, granted him EOW and found me liable for his fees.

He now continues to abuse and control me, using my son, only he knows better how to make veiled threats (via my son and the parenting app we use) to avoid another Non Molestation Order.

We've been back to Social Services as my sons behaviour has spiralled at school since unsupervised contact commenced. He was interviewed, made all the right noises and case was closed.

It's all bloody woeful. I've no more money to fight again.

@Polik Social care are just as useless to be honest. Easily manipulated and also believe every word the child says without digging deeper.

Emotional abuse can be very subtle. If adults can't see that they are being abused until they have had extensive therapy then how are kids going to articulate abuse? Abusers make everything out to be normal to those they are abusing. Sounds like you need better training.

This is just what happened to my son in law. His ex accused him of abuse and her mother backed up her story. He didnt see his child for a year because of these accusations. He was questioned by the police and charged. In court, her mother finally admitted that she was lying and that they'd come up with the story of abuse so that his ex could get legal aid and stop my sil from seeing his child. Despicable women!

Exactly! I have explored every single avenue to protect my children and I'm like a dog with a bone tbh because the failure of my final hearing is just a catalyst for me.

@Sugarplumfairy65 So they both lied to the court and nothing happened to them? Goodness me!

DHs ex lied to the court on a statement which we could prove but the judge wasn't interested. Essentially giving a green light to lie in court.