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.

I'd like to know too. I think they actually convince themselves and do everything to justify their actions. There's no emotional attachment for them just another days work 🙄

And also, you generally need a solicitor to be heard in court. The solicitor is after money. Not justice

Don't get me started on solicitors. I represented myself and my ex had a gaslighting lawyer. She tried to convince everyone that my child had every chance of getting into the local, oversubscribed Catholic secondary school where all her friends were going, if she didn't go to Mass every week. The ex refused to take her to Mass despite being (formerly it seems) Catholic. The Cafcass officer and the judge put her and him straight in court, but it didn't make any difference, was like water off a duck's back. She downplayed everything. I wonder how she can sleep at night.

I think the magistracy needs to be overhauled and there should be a scheme to support IDVAs to apply to become
magistrates.
unfortunately the roles are voluntary and need a lot of time to be given - then it means most people who do it are older and retired. I don’t know what the training is like
but I can imagine not great.

I think i'd want to prioritise vigorously overhauling and retraining cafcass first. How can officers question children without making any effort to build rapport first? How can possibly think it is ok to ask leading questions? How can they ever think it is appropriate to meet one parent in person but not the other?

So true. I still think it's insanity that a stranger can meet a child for 15 minutes and expect them to pour their hearts out. They are trusted to decide how that children will spend their entire childhood based on that 15 minutes. I carried my children for 9 months, birthed them, raised them and spend majority of time with them. But sure the Cafcass officer knows best 🤔

This was a surprise to me. I Tim's my barrister I presumed they were ex solicitors/barristers and that a magistrate was a progressive position. Didn't hear of an IDVA until after my court ordeal either.

You are right about the Magistrates. As I posted upthread, I went through the system when my gc's were placed with me. My issue came about when the father of one (or in reality his parents) wanted substantial contact when I did not even know who they were until gc1 was 2.5 years old!

My neighbour was a Magistrate often sitting on such cases. Whilst a nice enough lady, she expressed her shock about the boys becoming subject to court proceedings when no-one had been near for over two years. She told me she found the cases incredibly boring and hated sitting on them. What??

I was also told by CPS when we were involved in criminal proceedings against the parent that they were very relieved when a District Judge sat because he got to the point, dealt with it unlike Magistrates who, as I witnessed, sat looking shocked on occasion. Surely they have training of some sort. It might be better if they pulled Magistrates from a larger more diverse pool of those from different backgrounds, cultures and life experience of such matters.

Yes! The magistrates need looking into too. My ex played the card of poor young black man pushed aside and made to be an absent father. The lead magistrate was an older black man and bought into this. Even mentioned it was important for he children to embrace their culture.
The implication of this was that it was ok for some abusive behaviour as it came under different 'parenting styles' particularly cultural differences. I saw him smiling wi to my ex whilst he laughed when I was giving evidence

DH's exW is one of the many people blocking family court. Her accusations have increased in severity as the years have gone on, every time a new court date approaches she lodged a new allegation, simply so the judge would then have to request further information at the next hearing, therefore not being able to end proceedings.
Didn't help that every hearing was heard by a different judge, however all 6 involved were very scathing of her and her solicitor's methods.

People like her also contribute to the problem. I raised genuine concerns and was worried I would be accused of this and I was. This meant genuine allegations were dismissed. Despite the physical, mental and emotional stress of the process all whilst raising young children alone it was still presumed I was intentionally drawing the process out when in reality I wanted nothing more than for it to be over as soon as possible.

@SpringMum30 if it wasn't so serious it would have been laughable.

Her solicitor arrived at the first hearing with a massive jumbled mess of "issues" and she was sent away with the instruction to come to the next hearing properly prepared and with her 3 "most serious" allegations, which she did. They were all ridiculous and not one of them related to anything that could be remotely considered abusive - though incidentally, were all based on actual events that had happened.

That second judge was very scathing of her taking up time in family court with the issues she had brought.

Over 2 years later and the week before a hearing she would file a new allegation with her solicitor and as the time went on the allegations were getting more and more serious. It was a horrible time.

At the final hearing the judge went to town on her behaviour, making a point of saying about her initial 3 "concerns" being so petty and how it was noticeable that the severity of her allegations had increased over the course of the time it was in family court.

She ended up sending 2 solicitors off with stress, causing the owner of the firm to have to pay costs because of one of the solicitors work prior to going off with stress, and a cafcass officer took early retirement because of her. To this day, she still maintains they are HER children, and she will make all decisions regarding them, and no court will convincer her otherwise.

I appreciate your experience. I know this does happen and is equally wrong and problematic. It is a less common occurrence though and shouldn't be presumed the reality for every case. Often it is. I imagine for magistrates that have sat through cases similar to the one you described naturally are sceptical based on their personal experience.

Yep! And in our experience, in all that waiting time, mother prevented child and father having any contact.
Each delay prolonged the estrangement.

Court felt that status quo should continue.
Father denied access.

Child has lost a father, grandparents and extended family.
No wonder children feel abandoned.

@MeliaLane I could have written that myself. It's an awful system. We lost count of the number of times she broke the order and absolutely nothing happens. She was just told "let's try not to do that again".

Awful for you.
Manipulative adults who, because of their own damaged background, convince themselves they are doing the best for their child. In our case, this is not the best for the child and this adult should know better.

We have not seen our DGC for four years. We played as full a part as we could prior, though always felt DiL didn't really want us around, even then. Full of charm ( both of them) hasty marriage, urgency to have a baby, controlling and emotionally abusive.

Losing our DGC, feels like the break up of any relationship, gut wrenching. Sadness, upset, grief, we miss our DGC immensely. We have had to learn to move on and live without, but this is my DH’s blood relative ( and always will be). It is awful to have someone take this away.

I can only imagine how our DGC feels about our unexplained disappearance. Working with children, I see the damage caused, the alienation, the lack of trust, the abandonment.

We did have some very limited contact planned but we were told by EXDiL, prior, what we could and couldn't talk about. This included no mention of DGC’s father.
There is a fear on her part, that her past might catch up with her, we know too much as we supported, paying for counselling, bailing them out financially. We are a relic from the past and there is no way ExDiL will want any of that to be part of her new life. Her charm needs to be maintained.

This contact was to be a ‘one-off’. DiL would not commit to any follow up. It seems very cruel for our DGC to meet us once in four years and it to appear we have walked away again. I'm not sure I can put this LO through this. Perhaps no relationship is the best, we are trying to work that out.

We send presents and cards ( to a false address provided) . We never get a response, not even a thank you. We are not sent anything on behalf of our DGC - ( no Christmas card, no annual school photo). Nothing.

Feels this part of our family has died.

I think back to the OP @SpringMum30 - it isn't just women who are traumatised, it is men too, it is dad, grandad, uncles too.

True but we're talking about a majority here. This screams "all lives matter" to be honest with you

@MeliaLane that sounds awful and not too dissimilar to our experience.

DH has created a box from court that he can pass on to the children should the need ever arise. It shows categorically the lengths he went to and the levels she stooped to. Who knows whether it'll ever be needed but it gives DH comfort to know he has plenty of evidence to disprove her lies.

Yes, we do similar. Take photos and clips of presents bought, copies of letters etc.
I very occasionally come across a SM photo and save this so that we still know what our DGC looks like. Sad eh?

Maybe when our 18 year old DGC gets in touch, in the distant future, we can share our efforts made to keep in touch or even why we felt that it would be better to be out of touch rather than ‘in and out’ at the whim of our ExDiL....or perhaps not - does this just screw up a young adult even more, when they realise their own DM has mislead them all along?

There is a fear on her part, that her past might catch up with her, we know too much as we supported, paying for counselling, bailing them out financially.

Hmm. It almost sounds like you’d use mental health and financial issues against her. But surely you wouldn’t do that. Or would you?

I understand you’re hurting. I get that. But there’s a slightly sinister tone to your sentence.

Couldn’t agree more OP.

No, not sinister at all.
She portrays as a really lovely woman. No mental health issues, more learnt poor behaviour. The counselling was relationship counselling for them both. The financial was due to a ‘I need it now’ attitude. We often made up their mortgage shortfall to keep a home for DGC ( whilst she bought private plates for her car).

It is difficult to maintain being someone different to who you rreally are though.

For instance, what does she tell others ( her own family, her new extended family) about why we don't see our DGC? Do they think we have abandoned DGC?
We are reasonable, decent people, in education and higher levels of public service ( DBS in place, trusted to work with children)
Surely, if we were part of our DGC’s life, through our normal behaviours, it would be apparent that we are fit to have contact with our DGC, that this LO is not at risk.
How does she truthfully justify the lack of contact to her family and friends?

Time will tell if she repeats her behaviours, including financial.

Forgive me for being very wary of grandparents claiming their sons ex was manipulative and that he is a picture of innocence... But every abused woman I speak to has an ex with parents who are sure their darling boy couldn't possibly be abusive behind closed doors.

My ex was a model dad and husband whenever his parents were there. Quite prepared to put my son and I in danger of our lives over and over again when they weren't there.

@SweetSakura yep. Mothers of boys and all that. No one’s sons is ever a rapist or abuser or a rubbish dad. It’s all these evil women making stuff up about their darling sons who are victims of these awful women.
I get it. It’s the preferable narrative to sell yourself as the parent of a grown man accused of these things.

I saw a meme the other day and it said

‘instead of asking why a father doesn’t see his child, ask the mother why he had to fight so hard’

this was posted by a grandparent. And I thought ‘yeah let’s ask’ because they’ll be a damn good reason.