There has been a great deal of controversy around family law in England and Wales in the past two years, all of which has been focused upon the idea that children are being removed from the care of protective mothers to be given to abusive fathers. At the heart of this controversy is the media, which has positioned itself in recent months as the judge of the judiciary, suggesting that there is a lack of transparency, misogyny and incompetence in decision making, especially in relation to cases where children strongly align with a parent and reject the other. From horror stories to High Court actions (see the link above), the drive for transparency has been determined, often indignant and consistently self righteous in perpetuating the belief that something untoward is happening in the family courts. Since 2020, this campaign has targeted expert witnesses, judges, legal people and academics and it has utilised a number of well known women, some of whom have already been recognised as having attempted to influence outcomes in cases where children have been seriously harmed by their mother. But has this crusade, based on manipulations, deflection and often what can only be described as targeted attack, begun to falter in the light of cold hard evidence which is now coming to light? And have the very people who have been so relentless in their pursuit of ‘truth’ been involved, perhaps even unknowingly, in hiding something darker and uglier than even they could imagine.
Cases where children align and reject and make false allegations and where they are found to be being influenced by a parent, are, in my experience, always about child protection. This is especially the case when they are in the High Court, because behind the decisions taken by High Court judges, are some of the most serious acts of child abuse perpetuated by parents. Despite this however, the determination of a, by now, well known group of campaigners, to portray these cases as being wrongly judged and putting children at risk from harmful men, remains obsessive. Since 2020, this campaign has also involved public servants such as the London Victims Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner as well as MPs and other key people in Parliament all of whom appear to believe the self reports of mothers found to have abused their children. These same self reports which are treated by academics as if they are revealing hidden truths about a secret system which favours fathers over mothers, have fed a belief, which borders perhaps at times on delusion, that something untoward is happening behind closed doors in the family courts.
Earlier this week I wrote about the in increasing prevalence of this obsession as a growing shared delusional belief which is driven by the ideological mindset which underpins it. I worried in that article, that the Courts were becoming ideologically aligned and falling into the same shared belief being promulgated by these campaigners. As this week has unfolded however, it is clear that far from this, there are some emerging trends, which show that the actions of some of these campaigners, including those in the media, are coming under scrutiny.
In recent weeks for example, it has become apparent that one of the mothers featured in the BBC documentary entitled Mums on the Run, has been repatriated back to England after she had abducted her child to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. This mother is now in prison awaiting sentence and her child is likely to be in care. The Mums on the Run documentary was based upon an article by Elizabeth Dalgarno of Manchester University and SHERA, which took the self reports of mothers as being fact, when in reality the facts are that at least one of those mothers now in prison for abduction and child abuse. Perhaps that reality might help those who have, until now, accepted everything this group of campaigners are saying as truth, to think more critically about what they are being told. Time will tell on that I suppose but it will be interesting to see how MPs and others who have been misled by the reports and documentary, will react.
The imprisonment of the mother from the mums on the run documentary is not the only emerging news however, because a judgment published this week, which features some of the most highly skilled legal people working with serious emotional and psychological abuse of children in the High Court of England and Wales, reveals that patterns of behaviours in these campaigners, continue to be present in live cases, in what can only be called questionable ways.
The judgment concerned features Louise Tickle, she who has positioned herself at the heart of the drive for transparency in the family court. Louise Tickle, along with Hannah Summers, recently took action in the High Court to overturn a judgment by Mr Justice Williams in the Sara Sharif case (see link in first paragraph) and in doing so revealed that she was clearly angered by the criticisms levelled at her and Summers, by Williams J, in his decision to prevent them from publishing the name of the Judge in the case.
Tickle and Summers overturned the decision of Mr Justice Williams, who himself came in for some criticism in the judgment from that appeal. Nonetheless, it cannot be lost on many who watch this space closely, that the judiciary is all too aware of the way in which some in the media tread the finest of lines in the way that they utilise their press freedoms to pursue an agenda.
In this recent judgment published on 9th June, Tickle takes on the father, mother and children’s Guardian in an attempt to find out who had sought disclosure of her sources, after she turned up at a hearing at which the father had been given limited notice. In her judgment Ms Justice Henke tells us –
Within the fact-finding hearing, on 21 October 2024, Ms Tickle submitted a Statement of Case in which she asked to be able to report upon an “application” made in proceedings before me to disclose who had tipped off the press about a hearing before Mr Justice Francis on 12 January 2024. She wanted to able to quote from the “application”, as well as to report what had happened in court and how it had been dealt with. Within her statement, she told me that she can do this without referring to the underlying facts of the case except in the most general terms. She asked me to publish a judgment about my decision.
This judgment has now been published and it makes for very interesting reading because it would seem that the press knew about the said hearing hours in advance of the father, a party to the proceedings, was informed about it. Reading the judgment of Ms Justice Henke, it is clear that something is clearly going on in this case which requires closer scrutiny, because the judgment also declares that the father’s article 6 ‘rights to a fair hearing’, were infringed at the hearing in question.
As the fact-finding hearing progressed, and as the issue of when the father was notified of the hearing on 12 January 2024 came into focus, I was asked on behalf of the Guardian to make enquiries with the local Family Court and the Royal Courts of Justice to obtain the court file. That disclosure was not the subject of any objection by any party at the time. The court file in the Royal Courts of Justice was disclosed and led to a timeline being established. The disclosure thus obtained, when viewed in the context of all the evidence in the case, established that the press knew of the application a number of hours before the father, who only knew of the hearing shortly before it commenced. I have found that that late notice infringed his right to a fair trial under Article 6.
Having worked in a case where the press were given access to documents that the appeal court described as having an intention which could only be to further the mother’s case’ (a mother who had already been found to have seriously harmed her children), I am aware of the serious harm this kind of behaviour can cause to children. I had to work hard with the children in that case to protect them from the lurid headlines which followed the leaking of the mother’s skeleton argument to the press and the online speculation which followed from this same group of campaigners. It is no mean feat to protect children whilst someone is leaking information to the press in an attempt to stir up the court of public opinion and the eventual judgment in that case detailed the challenges of doing this work in the midst of misinformation in the public domain which was clearly designed by the mother and her supporters, to pressure me to step down. Reading this current judgment, which features the same barrister for the mother, I find myself wondering whether the same pattern may be in play once again.
Whilst the press may have freedoms, those freedoms come with responsibilities, to protect the children at the heart of such cases and to ensure that justice is not impeded. It is impossible to say for certain what is happening here but Tickle, in her drive to protect her sources, has clearly given this judge, the opportunity to show the outside world that the press knew about a hearing in the case before the father did. And it seems to be that despite protestations about press freedoms, it may well be in the public interest as well as the transparency that the likes of Tickle et al are so determined to pursue, that we are able to know what the press knew, how did they know it and what the purpose of them knowing it actually is.
Ms Justice Henke has already handed down detailed judgment on the fact finding in this case and it will be published soon, so we will certainly find out more. In the meantime, I will be watching this case carefully because as the news this weeks shows, what is happening in the family court out of view of the general public, is definitely something other than this group of campaigners want you to believe.
Last call for Utrecht Workshop
We will shortly be closing the bookings for our workshop in Utrecht as we are nearing capacity. If you would like to join us on the 5th July when we will be working on the Journey of the Alienated Child, the Right Action at the Right Time protocol and more, please book now to secure your place. The day will be packed with new insights, new tools and new thinking about how to reconnect, rebuild, remember and repair the attachment trauma suffered by children said to be alienated. The venue is central Utrecht, close to the railway station and final details will be sent to participants shortly. We are looking forward to this first in person workshop with parents for five years and to meeting and working to building many Lighthouse Parents in Holland.
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
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