Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer

‘ it feels as if we have escaped from harm only to find our abusers are in control of the public narrative around our experience’.

My Experience is Real – Alienated Victims of Parental Abuse – Palace of Westminster – November 2023

The campaign to misrepresent what is happening in the Family Courts in the UK and around the world continues with known women’s rights activists in positions of public power, repeating the now well worn trope that children are being handed to their abusive fathers despite allegations of sexual abuse. In the UK, the London Victims Commissioner spoke on BBC Woman’s hour about her goal of preventing a claim of parental alienation in any case where allegations of sexual abuse are made, stating that all such claims should be properly investigated, (which sounds ridiculous to anyone who understands the inner workings of the family court because allegations of child sexual abuse are always investigated thoroughly). 

In France meanwhile, the UN Special Rapporteur, who is making a much publicised visit to the UK next month, (no doubt to spend time with the same group of women found to have been manipulated by a mother who seriously abused her children to the extent where she forced them to make false allegations against their father), spoke about the need to ensure that allegations of sexual abuse must always be taken seriously.

Allegations of sexual abuse ARE always taken seriously, very seriously. So seriously in fact that in the cases I have worked in there has been a complete cessation of all contact between child and parent alleged to have caused abuse, until such time as the allegations have been fully investigated by the police as well as the Local Authority. And despite the lurid claims that experts have the power to subvert democracy by preventing the police from speaking to children, (often accompanied by claims that people like me are brainwashing children into loving their abusive parents), all professionals take allegations of abuse seriously. We take false allegations of abuse seriously too and when allegations are found by a Judge to be false, even further investigation is undertaken to understand why allegations are being made and what might be behind the smokescreen of the false claims being made.Because depth understanding of families where children align and reject is absolutely necessary to ensure that children’s rights to be protected come first. It has been my abiding committment for the past fifteen years to uphold the paramountcy principle through thick and thin, I wish I could say the same for those public servants who allow themselves to be made figureheads for false narratives.

Against the backdrop of the continued obfuscation of the reality of what is happening the Family Courts, victim children are getting ready to speak out and call for their experiences to be heard and responded to. Over the coming year we will be supporting these young people to express their experience to those who have the power to ensure that their voices are heard and responded to. And this is a very necessary thing for a group of victims whose real life experiences are simply being erased by people in positions of power, on the say so of parents who have been found, after due process, to have abused their children.

Adult child victims of parental abuse in divorce and separation are asking those public servants this question –

‘who will help us if our experience is denied?’

Adult child victim of emotional and psychological abuse in divorce and separation – November 2023

Who indeed. Who will help the children whose voices are silenced, first by the parent who is abusing them and then by those who are appointed to represent all victims but who believe the narratives of abusive parents without discrimination and then act upon them. 

The real victims in these stories are the children who are silenced, the children who are being forced to make false allegations of abuse, the children whose lived experience is re-written, erased, manipulated and hidden away.

In 2024 those recovered now adult children are ready to speak about what it is like to suffer coercive control, be psychologically and emotionally abused and then to have that experience denied by those who should be representing their needs.