In recent days, after missing mother Samantha Baldwin and her two sons aged six and nine were found, details have been released about the reason why the children were considered to be at risk of harm. The reasons, which include drugging her children as part of false allegations of abuse against their father, are common amongst a particular group of parents who alienate their children against the other parent. The sad part about this case is that the children appear to remain in foster care rather than being reunited with their father. The reason for this being that they had not had a relationship with him for some time prior to their disappearance, which seems to mean that there is a belief that care is the better option for these children. It almost certainly is not.
From my perspective as an expert in reuniting children who have been alienated against a parent, the worst outcome is when children lose not one but both of their parents in the attempt to repair the damage that one parent has done to them. Whilst some complain that the court does more damage than good and others believe that the family court is not the place to deal with such cases, in my experience it is not the court which does the damage but the unskilled practitioners who do the work of carrying out the judgements in such cases. Contrary to the belief that the family court is not the place to do this kind of work, it is absolutely the place where such matters must be dealt with, but attempting to resolve such cases without the court’s firm control of the dynamics, especially when children are at such risk of harm, is both foolish and naïve. What is required when children are used as pawns in this way, is the holding of the case by a skilled judge and the delivery of a strong intervention to reunite children with the parent they have rejected which is carried out by skilled practitioners. When these two elements are combined, children are protected, reunited with their rejected parent and the risk of harm is vastly reduced.
Children who are being influenced to reject a parent are often at the mercy of a parent who is driven by rage, hatred and other highly negative feelings which arise at the end of the adult relationship. The psychiatric term for this is the Medea Complex and it is serious and concerning to observe. In Samantha Baldwin’s case, it would appear that a determined eruption of fury and resistance, led to a plan to spirit her children away in the face of a judgement she did not agree with, a plan which was executed on the day the judge decided her children should go into care. Supporters of this mother say that she is a great mum and that the judgement is wrong. In my experience, parents like Samantha are capable of inveigling others into the delusional belief of persecution, a belief which is rarely based on truth and one which can continue long after children have been removed and reunited with their rejected parent.
We haven’t heard much from these children’s father but in my experience, it is with him that these children’s longer term wellbeing is best protected. Children who reject a parent in the circumstances so described are often able to reunite with that parent when they have been removed from the parental source of their allegations and professed fear. Given that they have lost one parent to the behaviours that arises in some parents through and beyond family separation, it will be tragic if they have to lose both on the basis that they haven’t seen their father due to the long period of prevention from doing so on the basis of false allegations.
The court has made its judgment, the children have been found. Now is the time to bring the boys back together with their father to bring them peace and certainty that they are safe both now and into the future. Punishing them by making them lose both parents because of the actions of one would be a tragic outcome that they do not deserve to suffer.
This post is a feaured blog on Huffington Post today – 12.4.2017
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
This sounds very familiar to my own case, and I was wondering if I could use this example with my own evidence.
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I don’t see why not !
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This is the same as my case went to court to get a court order enforced and spent two years in the family courts system whilst the mother carried own alienating me different judges , delayed hearing Cafcass a joke , had to walk away to stop my son being emotionally abused , when he eventually comes to find me it will take years to undo the damage done , no choice! Wrote to No 10 no reply then read let me see me son ! This was so similar to my case doctors changed illness faked , doctors changed schools changed the whole thing was nuts
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How absolutely right you are, Karen! The long yars of painful separation while the false allegations were unravelled will only begin to heal once the children are restored to their father, who has, at last, been found innocent of all charges. They will have been damaged by their mother’s vengeful anger. They do not need the uncertainty of “care” by strangers. How could that possibly be better than the love of their father, who has suffered by their absence and by the smear campaign against him? In the mother’s mind, she has succeeded in her campaign: “if I can’t have them, he can’t either”. Those poor children are still being used in the mother’s game of revenge: the court should not be helping her, but helping them to recover before even more damage is done. The precedent set by the court here will encourage other vengeful parents to use the same methods: threats on the lines of “if you report me to the police/authorities, for physical or emotional abuse, I will deny it, accuse you, and the children will be taken into care because of parental conflict, and I will get legal aid to fight you in the courts and you won’t”.
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Sometimes despite a well intentioned contact/residence order, there is just no empathy or humility within the family. It is a case of good parent/bad parent, and the children have to adapt to this as best they can. There are far too few practitioners who can cut through the family dynamics and identify the way forward. Hopefully that will change over time and there were will be more trained practitioners in and around the courts. I have to admire parents who though no longer have any feelings or connection with each other, nevertheless present a united front when it comes to the children.
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Reblogged this on LOST DAD.
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Having gone through this court system myself, not seeing my children for 3 1/2 years and accused of some outlandish allegations, it’s simply not sufficient to have ‘lay’ professionals following said procedure and process in the courts. Whether that is a judge, barrister, solicitors social services, etc. This ‘pandemic’ needs the courts to have a progressive approach, as the loopholes are all too well being exploited. Reading this case from the outside in, having a 12-day fact find, clearly the allegations would have been substantial, and you would have thought that involvement of social services and / or police leading upto this FF would have revealed some sense of wrongdoing??. I am a father, and my view isn’t simply to support the dad, but it’s wrong that all engagement with his children stops, when you have a mother purportedly giving children prescription medication to further her convoluted viewpoint to alienate him from his children. I was one of the lucky ones, I got my children back, but putting these children into ‘interim care’ at and the behest of a professionally inept and untrained social care system will further damage their minds. Let’s hope that this judge sees sense in the final judgment.
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Yes, sadly I’ve been there too and continue to be estranged from my daughter. Tragically a far too familiar story , but hopefully the more people speak up about it from personal experience, the sooner this lunacy will end.
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I agree
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“What is required when children are used as pawns in this way, is the holding of the case by a skilled judge”
Unfortunately, ensuring that this happens isn’t possible or realistic. You cannot just get rid of an un-skilled judge and simply get a skilled one. 3 attempts to have a judge recuse, 3 failed appeals where a circuit judge simply protects their lower judge rather than enabling justice. 3 more years of harm to my child. The system protects itself rather than children. There are no safeguards against rotten judges or rotten social workers.
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Yes, William, our experience too. The disordered parent was able to corrupt the judge, (we tried twice for recusal) the doctor, the court clerks, some but not all social workers, including a very senior one, and a criminal court (to escape police charges.) It took us four years and a fortune to finally obtain justice and rescue the children. The whole family court/local authority/Cafcass system needs more training to recognise the warning signs; while lengthy investigations and deliberate court delays, (use of mediation as a delaying tactic, etc) go on for years, the damage to the children used as pawns deepens.
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Im not taking sides but maybe her allergations were true and the boys had been sexually abused by their father..i work within this field and the police and CPS rarely take it any further as there is lack of evidence..believe me there are thousands of children who have been abused whom the abuser can still see ..
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that’s a sweeping generalisation Julie and not one which is born of any evidence whatsoever. I, and no doubt many other readers on here would take issue with the statement ‘there are thousands of children who have been abused whom the abuser can still see…’ and you appear, in your comment, to completely overlook the fact that this mother drugged her children to re-inforce her allegations…after a TWELVE day hearing and investigation by the police I think your comment is way off the mark myself and borne out of a particular way of seeing the world, a way which is lazy and based upon stereotypes, I have let this comment through because I think it is important that we understand how and why this kind of thing happens to children and how and why they are kept from an innocent parent for too long losing their right to a relationship with a perfectly good enough parent because of the un-wellness of the other. The police and CPS have kept many of the parents I work with on bail for many many months whilst they investigate a case which eventually they close due to complete lack of evidence. I doubt those parents would agree with your statement and I for one, find nothing in what you say to be believable, particularly as I too have worked in this field for many years.
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There is something about the way Julie writes that makes me wonder if she is in fact one of Ms Baldwins “lieutenants”, and I agree with your response to her. However, in one way she could be right about abusers still being able to see their children. The whole situation is fraught with difficulties. If residence is reversed, but little or no mention is made of abuse behind closed doors, or action taken on what the children report, then the actual abuser, presumed innocent, still sees the children on weekend and holiday time contact, and will go on abusing the children during those times. The children dread that contact time, but are enforced to endure it by court order. That order, on the face of it, seems right and good – a good relationship with both parents is essential. But what if one parent is seriously disordered, which is notoriously hard to prove, especially in those on the high functional sociopathic spectrum? The children will still be open to abuse, and the well parent, knowing this, has to continue to leave them vulnerable to it, unprotected, on every visit. When those children are grown up, they might, with justification, turn to the non-abusing parent and say: “you KNEW what we were suffering, you experienced it yourself, and we told you, but still you made us go. WHY?”
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‘the police and cps rarely take it further as there is a lack of evidence’
…and usually do nothing at all about false allegations and accusations unless they would have a media shitstorm crisis on their hands if they didnt. The exception to the ‘rule’
Nothing happened. Damn it. Where’s evidence when you need something fabricated to make it look like something happened. A suggestion will do, a suggestion is evidence. Did he breathe? Guilty!!!!!
Sentence: disposability for life from birth.
Fire!! Rape!! Help!! Wolf!! Racist!! Homophobe!! White Man!! Dinosaur!! Hetrosexual!! Normal!! Mental!! Crazy!! Frog!! Creep!!
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Hi Karen
I have been astounded by some of the accounts i’ve read of this case. It is revealing to learn how a particular mindset (or should it be lack of a mind set) would prefer to cling to a set of nonsensical beliefs like a comfort blanket.
In this case there was a 12 day trial of allegations which turned out to be entirely false. There were 2000 pages of ‘evidence’ and at the end of it not a single allegation could be made out to the dismally low civil standard of proof ‘on balance of probabilities’. Not one. The judge published his findings yet still people would prefer to believe utter nonsense and cling jealously to completely irrational beliefs.
Francesca Wiley wrote about how courts and professionals, ‘…have assumed a default position of initially believing allegations made by children (often supported or manipulated in the manufacture of extreme allegations by their primary carer either consciously or unconsciously).’
Most people do not question this because, it is claimed the law places children at the centre of proceedings. But, this default stance also exposes extreme bias in the way these cases are investigated and heard. On the one hand we have a parent who is innocent and through complete and utter lack of evidence is exonerated. On the other hand we have the accuser who has failed to provide any credible evidence but there is direct evidence for failing to take a child to get them ‘medical aid’ when they needed it, that is if they were ever abused in any way. The offence of child neglect is defined by s.1 (2)(1) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 as:
‘a parent or other person legally liable to maintain a child or young person, or the legal guardian of a child or young person, shall be deemed to have neglected him in a manner likely to cause injury to his health if he has failed to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid or lodging for him, or if, having been unable otherwise to provide such food, clothing, medical aid or lodging, he has failed to take steps to procure it to be provided under the enactments applicable in that behalf;’
Why is a parent that is only alleged to have committed an offence prevented from seeing their children for sometimes years when there is no evidence, whereas not one of the court professionals bats an eyelid at leaving children in the care of someone that has been proven to have neglected them?
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Reblogged this on | truthaholics and commented:
“We haven’t heard much from these children’s father but in my experience, it is with him that these children’s longer term wellbeing is best protected. Children who reject a parent in the circumstances so described are often able to reunite with that parent when they have been removed from the parental source of their allegations and professed fear. Given that they have lost one parent to the behaviours that arises in some parents through and beyond family separation, it will be tragic if they have to lose both on the basis that they haven’t seen their father due to the long period of prevention from doing so on the basis of false allegations.
The court has made its judgment, the children have been found. Now is the time to bring the boys back together with their father to bring them peace and certainty that they are safe both now and into the future. Punishing them by making them lose both parents because of the actions of one would be a tragic outcome that they do not deserve to suffer.”
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Governments waste so much money on hair-brained schemes that eventually come to nothing. To have a trained practitioner in every Family Court, who is able to identify possible cases of parental alienation and have the expertise to deal with them swiftly, would surely be money well spent. I have no knowledge of the exact repercussions of PA over time, but early identification would surely have a definite impact on the mental health and physical health of children and parents alike.
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