Domestic Violence and the Family Courts

[olgaga]

A brilliant report on this subject was released recently, to very little fanfare...

It was covered in a Guardian piece, but there was little coverage elsewhere.

The full report, Picking Up the Pieces is absolutely heartbreaking. Why is DV dismissed as "irrelevant" in contact proceedings in the Family Courts, when two women a week are murdered by partners or ex-partners?

I'm going to email my MP with a copy of the report and ask what he intends to do to ensure the recommendations in this report are actioned.

Can I urge you to do the same!

Shamelessly bumping my own thread here...

Too bloody right Olgaga! Well done for posting this!

outrageous!

Perhaps look at the signs od abuse in children too, and show your MP that DV physically harms DC too.

Imvho, children need protecting from abusive parents. Abusers ought to have ZERO rights at all to have access to them.

Not until they've proven themselves as safe/healthy.

Oh thank you Hissy! I have a friend who has been through such a terrible time with this whole business...

It's heartbreaking to read some of the experiences in the report, and outrageous that abuse is simply brushed aside in this way. I know the Family Courts are hard pressed, but even so...

Anyway here's a helpful analysis of the report by Marilyn Stowe (her off the telly):
www.marilynstowe.co.uk/2012/11/09/courts-not-following-law-in-domestic-violence-contact-cases-group-claims/

Don't bother reading the comments on her blog unless you want to get seriously depressed.

From Marilyn Stowe's blog:

As for the motivations of estranged partners seeking contact, a massive 79 per cent of the solicitors and barristers surveyed thought that power and control was a primary motivator for abusive partners seeking contact with their estranged families. Such professionals are exposed to families riven by domestic violence on a regular basis, so they are in a good position to make such judgements.

This is so important.
Make this a sticky?
(I think that that means something that stays on the site?)

another link: www.thunderclap.it/projects/575-learn-how-to-supportafriend

Thanks for posting - it still sends chills down by spine when I read things like this and am nodding (and crying) the whole way through. Hopefully work like this will lay the foundations for perpetrators of DV to be STOPPED by the courts, rather than enabled and encouraged. I am very lucky to have an amazing solicitor, but it's still really traumatic to have to face my Ex in court - I can't imagine how difficult it is for women who don't have really good representation. I was able to have special measures put in place for my fact finding hearing - I couldn't have done it without that.

The question I have is why on earth are we in this situation? At a time when really good stuff is being done by ACPO and the CPS, and even the government in accepting ACPO's wider definition of domestic violence, the Family Courts seem to have relegated DV to an issue that needn't concern them.

I'm all for children having two loving parents, but in this small number of cases which end up in the family court, why on earth isn't DV treated as a serious matter?

Especially as young children are involved. The mind boggles, it really does.