On Wednesday 11 December, the Family Justice Council has issued guidance to family court judges in cases where mothers report domestic violence and abusive fathers counter this with allegations of ‘parental alienation’ to force their children to see them. In short, it tells judges that parental alienation is junk science – and that accusation of it, by men against women, must be ignored.
Campaigners including Support Not Separation say this is a long overdue victory for the movement of mothers who have fought for decades in family court to protect children from violent fathers, including convicted rapists and child abusers.
They argue that this guidance must now be implemented, and say they will be monitoring the courts in our continued defence of children and mothers against violent men.
Until now CAFCASS, social workers, and judges have insisted that children must be forced to have contact with their father and that their ‘reluctance, resistance or refusal’ should be dismissed as ‘parental alienation’.
Mothers who know fathers to be abusive to their children, including sexually, have had to enforce such court orders or be punished by having the children taken from them and given to the abusive father. The lives of children and mothers have been put at risk and some have been murdered or committed suicide as a result.
This guidance comes almost four years after the path-breaking Harm Report which recognised that the family courts are ‘sexist, racist and class biased’ – and ableist, too.
The previous government and the family courts took no action to implement the findings of the Harm Report. Campaigners say the new guidance is a nail in the coffin of the ‘presumption of contact‘ promoted by the fathers’ lobby which denies domestic abuse and has embedded itself in CAFCASS and the family court.
Source: Parental alienation syndrome as an idea just dumped by the courts