野狼社区

A devastating involving 45 women who accused their partners of domestic abuse has highlighted serious health problems they have suffered as a result, they say, of biased family court proceedings.

While the study is qualitative and self-reported and so not generalisable to the wider population, the women鈥檚 experiences now indicate a need for further research.

Led by University of 野狼社区 researchers in partnership with members of and The Survivor Family Network, the UKRI funded study of the women and their 77 children will be published in the journal of family trauma, child custody and child development in the coming weeks.

The women told the researchers they attributed psychological conditions including suicide ideation, memory loss, depression and flash backs on what they were going through in court.

They also said physical symptoms such as Crohn鈥檚 Disease, cancer, psoriasis, heart palpitations and miscarriage were either exacerbated by or directly associated with the court proceedings.

One respondent told how her mother had a heart attack in court and another how she lost her father to a heart attack also while proceedings were ongoing.

And a respondent told the research team how an acquaintance of hers had killed herself during court proceedings involving allegations of so-called 鈥檖arental alienation鈥�.

The study also found:

• 43 out of the 45 parents, were given access to the children.
• One child had no contact after the parent accused of violence had abducted the child.
• In another case, the child reached an age deemed old enough to make their own choice.
• 43 out of 45 of the mothers鈥� ex-partners had some form of contact with the children, even the ones with child sexual abuse convictions.

According to the researchers, 39 of the women accusing their former partners of abuse were counter accused of a spurious legal argument called parental alienation (PA).

PA was used, argue the team, as a way to deny the abuse and grant access or even residency of their children to the abusive parents.

The remaining six women who were not accused said they were either threatened with PA or mischaracterised as medically or psychologically abnormal.

PA, a belief system universally rejected by , the and other , supposedly denotes psychological manipulation of a child to turn against his or her parent.

But and shows false allegations are rare and that it is extremely difficult to make a child make false allegations of child sexual abuse.

Though women who have suffered abuse are already highly vulnerable, lead researcher, Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno says the courts tend to side with the male perpetrators by accepting PA.

The tendency for the courts to side with men, says Dr Dalgarno, can be explained by lack of around coercive control and domestic abuse and many believe, a culture of which is .

A recent government Govt enquiry also showed that the family courts often when they .

And, adds Dr Dalgarno, the evidence shows the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) , and be to .

Dr Dalgarno, who is a lecturer in public health at The University of 野狼社区 and the Founder and Chair of SHERA Research Group said: 鈥淭his is the first study to link family court proceedings with suicide ideation, suicide and mental and physical health problems in women who have been subjected to domestic abuse perpetrator behaviours.

鈥淲e believe that these conditions should be examined at scale in clinical research under the umbrella term that we have coined as Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma (CPIT).

鈥淭he women we spoke to in our study provide a graphic depiction of the costs of parental alienation allegations 鈥� a pseudoscientific belief system designed to control women and deny abuse - to their psychological and physical health鈥� (see Barnett, ; ; Birchall and Choudhry, ; Hunter et al., (Ministry of Justice Harm report); Mercer and Drew, ; United Nations Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women and Girls, its causes and consequences (UNSRVAWG) report to the Human Rights Council, ).

鈥淭he women are already traumatised, so it鈥檚 not hard to imagine the impact of dealing with court proceedings which threaten to restore an abusive parent鈥檚 access to their children because the courts don鈥檛 believe them鈥�

Dr Dalgarno added: 鈥淢ost abusers are not convicted most women don鈥檛 even report to the police- this study is an important milestone in highlighting this problem.

鈥淭hough we can鈥檛 generalise from this qualitative study, the findings acknowledge the structural disadvantage and intrinsic societal misogyny faced by women, providing transferable insights into the wider population of mothers.

 鈥淭he system is loaded against abused women. Courts are often unsympathetic to them, and the men鈥檚 rights group families need fathers conference was recently attended by the Family Court president and CAFCASS representatives, but these organisations appear much less involved with mother-supporting groups like Women鈥檚 Aid.

鈥淚t is known that around 49% to 62% of the 55,000 private family court cases each year involve domestic abuse.

鈥淭hat is why we urgently need to know if these dreadful health impacts constitute a public health emergency 鈥� and that will require further research.鈥�

Questions over the dysfunctional nature of family court proceedings were publicised in the 2020 Harm Report by the Ministry of Justice.

The report accepted that PA is a tactic used by abusive fathers to deny abuse has occurred, though Home Office figures show only 2 鈥� 5% of domestic abuse claims are false.

* The assertions contained in this article relating to Cafcass are disputed by Cafcass.  For clarity it is noted that Women鈥檚 Aid and other groups representing mothers/female victim-survivors are members of the .

• An animation on parental alienation is available
• Health-related experiences of family court and domestic abuse in England: A looming public health crisis , published in the journal of family trauma, is available