Adult and child victims of domestic violence in the family court system get treated abhorrently; abuse is disbelieved, diminished and denied and evidence is covered up. Both child and adult victim are court-ordered into communication and contact with coercively controlling perpetrators. It delights the perpetrator and traumatises their victims, for years on end.

Why? Gender bias, false stereotypes, unethical experts, and abuse of power.

The expert witness in a family court case plays a significant role in the contact or custody decision. In 2016 academic research was published by Griffith University, Brisbane; the research covered the UK, Ireland, USA and Australia. The findings were shocking and raised serious alarm bells for victims of domestic abuse and children in these countries.

It reports,

“Of concern is current research which calls into serious question the expertise of these ‘experts’ when it comes to proceedings involving coercively controlling violence”.

Family court judges in the UK are mandated to take into consideration domestic abuse. Experts influencing family court decisions in these cases should have expertise in coercive control and report accordingly.

Coercively controlling perpetrators all have something in common – they don’t accept their behaviour is at fault; they lie, deny and blame their victim. The denying perpetrator needed an effective defence in the family court;  they needed a lawyer and an ‘expert’ to support that defence. Richard Gardner, a disreputable court reporter, created a defence which blamed mothers for a fathers abuse – he called his theory ‘parental alienation syndrome’, and a cottage industry of charlatans emerged along with specialist parental alienation lawyers. They would profit nicely from victim-blaming. Despite all the evidence on coercive control today, the parental alienation proponents still help the perpetrator deny domestic abuse in the courtroom, and, outside the courtroom, continue to lobby to get the spurious defence into legislation.

Family court systems globally appoint these under-qualified and unethical court reporters who are ‘family systems theory’ educated. The academic research found that these ‘experts’ believe that mothers alienate and harm their children, and they don’t believe it’s important to consider domestic violence when making custody decisions. There is a gendered nature to the problem of these court reporters who openly and shamelessly support Gardner’s theory and deny domestic violence.

The research found unequivocally that,

“contact with whom a parent the child does not live (usually fathers) is almost always deemed by the family courts to be in the child’s best interests, regardless of whether the non resident parent is a perpetrator of coercive control”.

In Ireland,

“research on interviews with family court judges revealed a pro access narrative that negated the coercive control future risk and ensured continued contact between perpetrators and their children.”

In the UK,

 “unsupervised contact was commonly ordered to abusive fathers”. The research found that “the biggest predictor of custodial/visitation recommendations was beliefs held by evaluators about domestic violence”.

The ‘family system theory’ reporters, wrongly believe, just as their abusive client believes, in false stereotypes that have been widely disproved by credible scholars. The unethical experts believe that the perpetrators are not to blame for their behaviour; their behaviour is induced, through stress or mutual conflict. That women, post-separation, are manipulative, vengeful, and bitter; that women exaggerate or intentionally lie about abuse. Research, on the contrary, shows that false accusations of domestic abuse by women are rare, and a perpetrator of abuse is four times more likely to lie.

It reports,

“evaluators recommendations seemed more tied to their own wishful thinking about the future rather than to the present realities of domestic violence”.

The unethical experts in the family court system hold enormous power; the reality of which is terrifying for any adult or child victim of abuse. They have the power to make a diagnosis bringing into question the parenting capacity of the domestic violence victim, based on their natural emotional responses to the abuse. These reporters do irreparable damage to women and children and as a result of their inaccurate reporting, women are not given a level playing field in the courtroom. Several well-known parental alienation ‘experts’ in the USA and UK have been found guilty of misconduct and have been fined and sanctioned accordingly; just like their coercively controlling clients, one by one their façade is crumbling.

The research found,

“evaluators misconceptions about domestic violence and the use of gendered stereotypes can place children at further risk of harm through consequent recommendations for perpetrators to have significant contact with their children.”

Constructing the child’s best interests in terms of maintaining the parent/child relationship, even when that parent is psychologically unsafe and violent, is not only putting children in grave danger, it's putting adult victims in grave danger too.

In summary, the report found,

“It would seem that many of the views held by the judiciary with regards to domestic violence are reflected in the assessments and subsequent recommendations made by these ‘experts’. Here, maintaining abusive fathers’ relationships with their children are the primary consideration in determinations of a child’s best interests. Achieving this often in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the judiciary and the ‘expert’ report writers need to make coercively controlling abuse and intimidation ‘disappear’. Coercive control is thus ignored or minimised, re-constructed as inconsequential, re-constituted as something else (e.g. mutual violence) and subsumed under alternative gendered narratives that call into question women’s credibility but not men’s.”

 By re-labelling coercive control as ‘conflict’, the resulting contact or custody orders are no different from those handed down in a non-domestic abuse case.

Once the abusive parent and their parental alienation team deny the psychological abuse and win custody, ironically, the coercively controlling parent then goes on to psychologically abuse their children and alienate them from the domestic abuse victim!

This research has been available since 2016. The unethical court reporters are still working today in the family court system and diagnosing mothers and treating children with their secret, special therapy to make children believe abuse did not occur.

That there remains a presumption, that contact with abusive parents is in the child’s best interests, given the overwhelming evidence of the effects of abuse on children, is perplexing and can only be described as human rights’ breaches by the family courts on a monumental scale. Urgent action is needed to remedy this unjust situation. In Australia, human rights lawyer, Serene Teffaha, of boutique Australian law firm Advocate Me, is taking on the family justice system in the courtroom on behalf of all women and children who have suffered from gross injustice as a result.

UK Governments must be alert that they and the police are currently encouraging victims of coercive control to come forward and report, only for this victim to enter the family courts and risk losing their abused children into the custody of their abuser.

No child should get subjected to abuse at the behest of a controlling parent. No child should get subjected to abuse due to gender bias in the family court system and lack of due diligence when appointing court reporters. No child should be subjected to abuse due to the lack of understanding around coercive control and lack of robust governance around the process that leads to decision making.

Judges and court reporters are entitled to their beliefs, but when those personal beliefs impact their decisions and the safety of children, then a register of interests must be made available so parents can make an informed choice rather than enter a system to get tricked, blamed, vilified and pathologised. Our systems must not oppress, and our systems must not cover up and enable child abuse.