Last week an article was published about the use of family therapy in the Family Courts in England and Wales. As a psychotherapist, I have worked in the Family Court, including the High Court, since 2009 and I was therefore interested to read what the author, (who is an academic rather than a psychotherapist), had to say.  

Unsurprisingly, given that the author is known for her reliance in her research on the self reports of mothers, her piece is evidenced by a single case study of a mother and her daughter who we are told was moved to live with a father against her wishes. The case study is presented as being true, although there is no contextualisation and the author positions this as being evidence that she is revealing something about family therapy in the court system, which has hitherto been hidden.

Unfortunately, whilst this testimony gives Sophie and her mother a voice, in terms of evidence it provides nothing at all and so the article is largely based upon supposition and hearsay. In essence, this is a self report of someone’s feelings, which is used by the author to draw conclusions to support her own hypothesis, that family therapy is used to abuse victim/survivors in the family courts. The problem being, that this hypothesis, simply isn’t true and an examination of the facts demonstrate that it isn’t true as I will go on to show.

Presumably, in writing the article, the author recognised that being neither a court involved expert or a psychotherapist, there is a weakness in her argument, which she seeks to strengthen in her writing of it, through her consultation with a Clinical Psychologist. Clinical psychologists, are not family therapists however and whilst the author also tells us that she consulted with a Manchester based academic, also known for her reliance on the self reports of mothers found to have caused harm to their children, that doesn’t mean anything terms of the veracity of the claims being made in the article either. In fact what this does is tell us the direction of travel before we even begin reading.

The article opens with the line that “family courts expect victim-survivors of abuse, to engage in therapy with the aim of creating friendlier relationships with their abuser”. Which is the standard campaign trope espoused by feminist academics and activists seeking to reform the family courts worldwide. Unfortunately, whilst academics may believe that what they are listening to is always true, the facts say otherwise and a simple analysis of that opening line, is enough to demonstrate that.

Claim: the family courts expect victim-survivors to engage in therapy.

Fact: The Family Court doesn’t expect anyone to do anything, the only ‘expectation’ that the Family Court has, is that parents will put the needs of their children before their own. How the needs of their children are determined are set down in law, which as it currently stands says that the welfare of children is the paramount concern. 

Fact: The Court does not have the power to expect or compel anyone into therapy.

Claim: the aim of therapy in the Family Court, is to make people friendlier to each other.

Fact: Psychotherapy in the Family Court is not about making people friendlier to each other, it is about protecting children from abusive parents and working out whether children’s attachment relationships can be preserved in the shadow of that protection.

It is clear from her article, that the author starts from the premise that the primary consideration of the Court should be the welfare of mothers and that from there, the safety and wellbeing of children can be guaranteed. This approach, which considers that fathers are an inherent risk to mothers and children, also believes that mothers are inherently protective.  That however, is not how the law works because, as set out above, the law places children’s needs as its paramount concern and makes decisions based upon facts not upon feelings. This means that where there are disputed facts, for example, that a child is being harmed by a mother or father’s behaviour, a fact finding hearing will be held to determine who is the perpetrator and who is the victim-survivor. When those facts are found, a decision will be made, which involves all parties, about how to proceed in the shadow of those facts.

Where family therapy is proposed and accepted as an intervention by parents, it is therefore in particular circumstances. As no-one can be compelled into therapy by the Family Court either, as this judgment makes very clear, it is therefore with the acceptance of all parties that family therapy commences.

So how does family therapy work in the Family Court?

Family therapy in situations where the Court has found a parent to have caused harm to children, works on the basis of protecting the child from harm by delivering a structural intervention which constrains the parental behaviour which is abusive, whilst attempting to build insight in someone who has caused harm. It requires a parent in the rejected position who is willing to put the child’s needs for a relationship with both parents first and a parent who has been found to be abusive who is willing to come into a therapeutic programme. As you will by now understand, this is a radically different reality to that which is described by the author of this article. And so, whilst she seeks to convince those who do not know what happens in Court, that something untoward is happening, those who work in the family court, recognise that the case study upon which she relies to make her claims, involves a child who was likely removed from her mother due to the Court’s concern about the harm she was causing to her daughter. 

Contextualising family therapy in the family courts with evidence

A case of family therapy, which can be contextualised by evidence is that of Child A, who is now eighteen and at University. Her story is told in the series of  public judgments and her experience of is one which offers extensive examples of  how family therapy is used in cases of coercive control.

Child A was found to be a victim of her mother’s coercive control and her removal from the harm being caused to her by her mother, came after fifteen months of sustained therapeutic work to assist her mother to develop insight and change her harmful patterns of behaviour. 

In Child A’s case, her mother had made sustained allegations of domestic abuse, which she subsequently admitted were false and withdrew. The family therapy, which I undertook for a sustained period of time, was therefore structured to enable this mother to share care of two children she had been found in Court to have abused, in the shadow of her having made up allegations about their father.  

This therapeutic programme offered intensive support to ensure that this mother could continue to share care even after her abuse of the children, but it ultimately failed, not because the therapy was designed to make the mother friendlier with the father, but because the mother could not or would not, change the control behaviours she had displayed over her children and their father for many years. Those control behaviours  included forcing her children to make false allegations against their father and physically harming themselves to make it appear that their father was abusing them. 

Mothers as victims of coercive control in the Family Court

There is a distorted view of reality which is being perpetrated by a group of ideologically motivated researchers and their dependence upon the self reports of mothers who have been found to have harmed their children. Unfortunately in determinedly presenting their case studies as fact rather than self reports, so many of these academics miss the truth of what family therapy and family therapists are really doing, some of which is supporting mothers who are true victims of severe coercive control.

As a psychotherapist, my work with mothers suffering from the loss of their children after domestic abuse, is a significant part of my case load. One such  case that I am working in currently in Holland, is that of a mother and her two children have suffered sustained coercive control and where those children are considered to be in need of sustained protection before therapeutic work can begin. The same dynamics are present in this case, which were present in the case of Child A above, as they are in all cases where children align with an abusive caregiver and reject the other. The manipulation of the child’s understanding of reality and the stripping away of all agency and sense of self are all behaviours which these academics should be familiar with, which operate to cause children to reject healthy parents and align with their abuser.

In my work with mothers who are victims of coercive control, family therapy follows the same process as that of fathers whose children are victims of controlling mothers. Protection from harm, constraint of the control a parent has over the child and then therapeutic input to test the capacity of the abusive parent to change.

Facts not feelings

The Family Court deals in facts and its paramount concern is the child’s welfare, not the feelings of mothers or fathers. In applying the law, where facts are found, therapy is often the last chance an abusive parent has to shift their behaviours and build insight about their children’s needs. Therapy is therefore about child protection first and opportunities for change in the shadow of that. Family therapy in the family court cannot be imposed upon anyone and it is not, as the author tries to convince us in her article, about the Court expecting that parents enter therapy in order to become ‘friendlier’ with each other. It is not about ignoring findings of domestic abuse and asking someone to ‘move on’ either, as I wrote extensively in 2018, family therapy is contraindicated where there are dynamics of coercion and control. It is about providing protection for children who are trauma bonded to someone who has been found to have caused harm to a child and offering structured support to test whether that parent can change their behaviour. 

Relying  on the un-contextualised, anonymised reports of children who are trauma bonded to abusive mothers, does not enlighten or illuminate anything, other than the feelings of those mothers. As such we must recognise that self reports do not represent factual reality and conclusions based upon them do not reveal something which has been hitherto hidden from view.

The truth is, that family therapy in the Family Court is based upon facts not feelings, it provides a chance for children to retain their attachment bonds in a protected environment, it provides an opportunity for a parent to change harmful behaviours and it is evidenced in the context of public judgments which allow for everyone to understand the truth of what is really going on.