Are we having the wrong debate; Parental Alienation vs Feminism?

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

Having attended the 2022 British Psychological Society’s annual conference on Expert witnesses (in family court) the day revealed a far greater concern underlying the conference’s expected agenda — that despite it being positioned as being about expert witnesses in family court, there was an overwhelming lean on the contested psychological concept of parental alienation and how to navigate it. First to speak was Justice David Williams KC, who sits as a family court High Court Justice as well as convening a working group within the Family Justice Council on experts in family court — his report can be found here. It states that among other worrying aspects facing family court hearings with an expert, that it is the shortage of experts that is the overarching driving factor of the Judiciary’s primary concern when it comes to retention and use of experts.

“It is my hope that a reinvigorated expert witness workforce will enable the Family Court to continue to deliver the best outcomes for children, young people and families. Mr Justice Williams and I will be monitoring the implementation these recommendations over the next 12 months to make sure we retain the quality and quantity of experts needed.”

His report was first published in November 2020 and the 12 month implementation would have seen it ended in November 2021, almost 12 months ago. His presentation via the BPS last week suggested that very little in this primary concern had altered and this provided enormous insight into one of the gravest pitfalls facing most mothers in family proceedings — why can’t domestic abuse victims challenge their psychological reports or assessments in a legally objective way? Why isn’t there a specific practice direction mechanism that does not leave them wide open to blatant criticism of being “ in denial, hostile and uncooperative” to the court process?

Having been in the family courts for a continual decade myself it is this critical lack of legislation that is leading to swaths of mothers being psychologically maimed and severed from their children permanently due to the ‘diagnosis’ provided by the expert witnesses that are appointed as Single Joint Experts. In both civil and criminal law there is clear and much used legislation that permits and guides a party through challenging such an expert report with objectivity and impartiality. This is fundamentally missing in the family court process. The question that became clear upon listening to the presentations throughout the days conference was that simply put the Family Justice Council do not wish to even entertain the prospect of challenging these experts for a number of reasons:

1. If puts off other experts from undertaking such work, feeling they are exposed to undue criticism and probable complaints.
2. Retention of current experts means the FJC and BPS, Professional Standards authority and HCPC (who regulate psychologists) is paramount to protecting its psychologists, not the public, in order to ensure retention numbers are sustained.
3. Time and cost — appointing an expert is in theory meant to assist the court and all satellite professionals involved and ideally the parties too. Permitting legal challenge would undoubtedly lengthen the case dramatically, increase the cost to the Legal Aid Agency (where children are made party to the case) and cost to the Local Authority when social workers and CAFCASS officers are also involved.
4. Pandora’s Box — the can of worms that would be unleashed to permit even one legitimate challenge would almost certainly reveal the substantial failings of a number of systems that the Ministry of Justice wants to protect at any cost, including that of safeguarding the general public. This is about saving face for the MoJ and not saving children and victims.

Justice Williams said what a Family Judge wants when they instruct an expert is this: “Clear Answers; what is the problem, can it be addressed, how and how long will it take?” He went on to say that experts were for 3 primary functions-

“settling cases, shortening cases and assisting determination, for both professionals and parties”

He went on to state,

“It (the experts) determine the direction of travel of the case and withut it the Judge cannot intervene. Can this single answer explain the single question? Is it nuanced? Is there clear advice? And does it give the parties guidance on how to address these issues before final hearing?”

Having listened to this and both been on the receiving end of enough cases in family courts where expert reports had torn families (predominately mothers) lives apart fully, it was with a heavy heart that I attempted to digest what he was actually telling the almost 300 global attendees ; that you, the experts, are the jury, judge and executioner and hold complete and total autonomy and power over the decisions made and the Judges will follow them almost blindly if it will speed up clearing cases off their bench. And that seemed to be the overriding message provided.

Among other concerning aspects of his own detailed report was that of the data sample (of this specific demographic being referred to as Allied health professionals such as psychologists and family therapists) the sample size here was 90. 56, or 13% were child and family psychologists, 5% child and adult psychologists and just 0.5% were family therapists. However almost half of the study, 45.7% had never previously undertaken expert work at all.

One significant aspect of the report states,

“However, 29.9% of respondents reported that they have never provided a written report in court as a treating clinician. We feel that it is essential for professionals to provide a report as a treating clinician (and gain feedback) before they engage in expert witness work, which indicates that there was a large number of respondents who have very limited prior experience with this work.”

Justice Williams declined to pinpoint a certain answer to the question I raised on what was the exact minimum requirement of expertise with regards to court appointed family assessments? There seemed no clear impediment or threshold required, hypocritical to his own report that experts must as the very least be treating clinicians first. Then what of the ‘career experts’ who have no employment record or treating history and nothing in the way of experience?

Experts are replacing Judges and due process of legal systems designed to assess complex law, such as balance of probability, domestic abuse, child sex abuse and fact findings. It is not uncommon for experts to jettison judge ordered fact finding hearings in favour of simply decrying one party “mentally unfit to parent” in a report that can be anything up to 100 pages long. In my experience most experts are unable to demonstrate any ‘workings’ and fall squarely into the self-generated opinion camp of assessments. Drawing back on the report published in 2012 by Professor Jane Ireland (which can be found here), now 10 years old I have seen no evidence in the reports being currently generated that any of her findings have altered or been affected by the subsequent guidance published by the BPS in both 2016 and 2022.

What was clear, not from the published agenda, but from the content delivered at the BPS conference, was that Parental Alienation was,

“In almost all cases — its in almost all domestic abuse cases, it is the reverse side of the coin…” Justice D. Williams September 2022.

So if the Judiciary are absolutely alive and aware to the fact that the silver sword of ultimate power every domestic abuser is using and will decry Parental Alienation, why is CAFCASS, the Judiciary, the Family Justice Council, the BPS, the HCPC, Professional Standards Authority, Social Work England, Ministry of Justice and Legal Aid Agency, wilfully abusing the use of self-styled unqualified Parental Alienation Experts as witnesses in any Domestic Abuse/CSA cases at all? If it is known and accepted that the ‘reverse side of the coin’ is Parental Alienation, how can any victim of Domestic Abuse challenge the Expert appointed to diagnose Parental Alienation without being further accused of hysteria, distress, delusion or worse their unqualified diagnosis or traits of personality disorders. It stands to reason that the reverse side of the coin would be the permission to appoint an Abuse expert on Domestic Abuse that significantly counters the one sided bias argument laid out by abusers. This legal mechanism is the argument that needs to be had. It exists in civil and criminal court and campaigners and activists would be well minded to consider this as a focus of their efforts if they are ever to be treated fairly in family courts.

Are we simply being distracted by the wrong topic of discussion, on one side the Parental Alienation Radicals are seeking to have it made a crime, (this would mean almost unanimously that any victim of domestic abuse would become the criminal and the abuser goes unsanctioned and free to re-offend) and on the other side many victims are desperately broken by substantial, persistent and longstanding domestic abuse and violence while fighting for their right to parent and peace. Given the true statistics, this comes down very clearly to women and children being punished for mens crimes. Is this the topic that needs airing with more fervour? Why are we punishing domestic abuse victims and their children in such a strategic and deliberate way?

It seemed hypocritical of Justice Williams to then express what appeared to be an good understanding of domestic abuse, against this bleak backdrop;

“Survivors of domestic abuse — are they cognitively challenged and is that trauma biased? Are we undervaluing their evidence if it is somewhat incoherent of their ability to give an account, was that impaired by trauma? The articulate and confident liar but the cognitively challenged truth teller, is a challenge.”

Again this begs the correct question, why are the courts permitting swaths of parental alienation experts to be appointed in domestic violence cases? There is a fresh but growing number of academic and legal understanding surrounding debilitating domestic abuse in so many guises and problematically it is causing the judiciary to neither pause nor change their own approach despite overwhelming science and research to support why they should.

“If a diagnosis isn’t made, then thats relevant but we view traits as a severely as a full diagnosis” Justice D. Williams

Does this statement seem inkeeping with the holding position currently undeclared by the UK Judiciary on Parentally Alienating Behaviours report coming in 2023?

The most alarming and woefully ignorant thing for a High Court Justice to admit to is that the judiciary are too concerned with clearing the case backlog and retaining the experts that will do precisely that than anything to do with the truth or justice for victims!

Every battered woman, every child witness, every single abuse victim without any exception will show significant traits that are the consequences of trauma, that when decontextualised can be repackaged by a charlatan Parental Alienation expert as personality disorder traits or even full blown diagnosis. Every single victim will show trauma signs that appear confusing unless understood by well qualified and very specialised trauma-informed domestic violence experts. Does this mean every survivor of abuse has a personality disorder? No! Does this mean that every parental alienation expert is causing harm? Yes! Is the debate that needs to be had, why are we, as a global entity so determined to dismiss, whitewash out and replace all trace of Violence Against Women and Girls? And is Parental Alienation simply a convenient red-herring doing the dirty works in the family courts?

The numbers tell a clear story that is being ignored from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner on the shocking amount of domestic abuse being ignored, un-ivestigated and uncharged. There are almost half the number of reported cases charged or convicted compared to 7 years ago, despite the numbers reported rising. It appears that Parental Alienation is a very well disguised panacea to eradicate domestic abuse from family courts altogether. The true impacts this is having on society means we silently becoming aligned to single fathers raising children alone denying them all contact to the mothers, whilst PA experts declare abusive fathers the ‘therapeutic and safe’ parent. The tables have flipped right over and the real victims have nowhere to go for justice.

Given what Parental Alienation was designed to do, transfer the perceived ill-begotten autonomy, rightly earned through early feminism, away from its second and third generations, and returning it back to men in the most powerfully painful way possible; declaring excellent and perfectly good mothers unfit and taking away their children. The matter is systemic and it is reaching epidemic levels globally. We are not nations of narcissistic and harmful mothers, but nations of violent and abusive men.