In my case there was a huge amount of evidence but the court didn't want to look at it. The judge even said merrily that they hadn't read all of the pages within the bundle... like that was something to be proud of.
But I realised, to my dismay, that everyone tells you Family court is nothing like law court, and I thought it just meant that they are more relaxed. I didn't realise it meant they don't want cold, hard facts.. so all it ends up being is a very expensive game of law. They quote each other from previous cases where a lay person has no idea what's going on, and the judge just weighs up what they think, and makes their decision. It is as terrible as that.
I've never been one to think anything of conspiracy theories but I was very much open to the idea that men still rule the world, there is an 'old boys club' mentality in many institutions (including the law) and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Freemasonry plays a part behind the scenes.
In my case the judge admitted my ex had been illegal towards me in his abuse but claimed that it will have no bearing on how he fathers the children. Instead, I was chastised for passing on my fear of him to the children and even told to welcome him into my home so the children relax around him. The fact that he had also abused them, albeit in a different way to the way he abused me, was not looked at so diligently, rather was just passed over briefly as an afterthought and then discounted because he promised that he would never do it again.
You can't make it all up. But I can see how it happens. If no one governs these decisions or is privy to the details of them, then why should they do a good job every single time? It makes it much more hot and miss.
The ironic thing is that my ex tried to alienate the children from me, but they saw right through him and it made them cling even closer to me. So he turned it around to then make out I was alienating them from him, and that was the most frightening journey I've ever had. When I pointed out that CAFCASS had an article on their website about how parental alienation can be mistaken and it is instead children responding naturally to the circumstances they experience (ie, a shit parent), his accusations were still taken seriously and for a while I had to let my abuser into the house on picking up the children. They were dark, dark days.