Is it Ideology or Expertise, when ‘Experts’ cause harm.
How much of what we believe is good for us can actually cause us harm? Harm can be viewed through a variety of lenses and none are more kaleidoscopic than the family courts. Social commentary and current awareness bring into focus the dangerous problem of unregulated ‘experts’ operating in family court. Experts can make life-damaging decisions as to the safety and viability of parents wanting to lovingly raise their own children in peaceful safety away from domestic abusers they have fled from. According to the British Psychological Society an Expert is to provide impartial, objective and scientific opinion that assists the court. However a recent survey overseen by Justice Lord Hodge, President of the Expert Witness Institute revealed,
“41% of the respondents indicated that during the preceding 12 months they had come across an expert witness who they considered to be a hired gun.”
By any standards this is an alarming statistic when considered with the expectations of appointing an expert for forensic purposes. The UK Judiciary published the summary checklist (on page 36) for the instructing solicitors in Childrens Act proceedings. There is little doubt these are being overlooked and negligently ignored in a significantly high number of cases. It states the following —
A. Regulation — which professional body is the expert regulated by?
B. Protected Titles — What title does the professional use?
Both are critical requirements for Judges, parents, all social workers and CAFCASS. All experts must be clear about the protected titles they operate and practice under. If an expert is using any other title that is not protected, unofficial and self-styled, this indicates the individual is not an expert, is probably a fraud and is not accountable to any professional standards or guidelines.
C. Competence — Continued Professional Development is a requirement for psychologists undertaking any type of psychological assessment and working with clients of any kind.
CPD must be with accredited providers and their CV must state the institution, course title, date and duration. Without these details anyone at all could watch a 10 minute youtube video and falsely claim it is CPD.
D. Use of Data .
Does the psychologist state their intention to undertake all aspects of the work themselves? If not then they must be asked for details of data gatherers used, their qualifications and those persons regulated and registered status. This applies to any type of coders and their alleged training and qualifications also.
E. Use of psychometric tests .
These are scientifically accepted tests, not obscure theoretical based tests (pseudo-science). If in any doubt, a comparison or basic search with the top private clinics in the field can be useful to find out if the tests proposed are nationally and internationally accepted, accredited training assured and recognised by either the HCPC or the BPS or the ACP. In short, if the NICE has not published guidelines or the WHO not acknowledged use in general practice, then it is most likely some kind of “reprogramming and reunification” package from sadistic providers like Family Bridges and the unscrupulous Richard Warshak.
F. Supervision and Peer review .
Another integral part of expectations of competency and professional standards is who specifically supervises their work and what other regulated professionals regularly peer review their work? Any psychologists who claims to be an expert would ordinarily have published and peer reviewed research they have produced and developed or participated in with credited recognition. If they do not, this is a significant alarm bell.
G. Letter of Instruction .
This indicates if the correct specialism is being selected and enormous variation in expertise can provide entirely the wrong type of expert if misunderstood by CAFCASS and Judges.
H. Compliance .
Often negligently overlooked, a DBS should be valid, (within the last 12 months), with the correlating job title clearly stated at the top. This must be undertaken by CAFCASS and/or the instructing solicitor before any letter of instruction is agreed.
Any solicitor who has not confirmed a valid DBS would be in breach of ethical standards, PD25 and subject to a formal complaint for negligence to the law society. Professional Indemnity insurance is also required as per PD25, and this certificate must be seen, in date and commensurate to the experts proposed undertaking. CAFCASS and/or the instructing solicitor are responsible for checking and confirming ahead of the instruction this is all compliant and verified.
Simply put expectations of standards exist and are deliberately being ignored by the family court, CAFCASS and some solicitors. So what happens when this goes wrong? Conservative government policy. According to the conservative woman and Penelope Leech new policies regarding Family Breakdown and single mothers were going to be at the heart of conservative party politics to ‘fix broken Britain’. Tim Loughton, Tory MP ex-Childrens Minister who voted against the Same Sex Couples bill in 2013, also became co-director of Mindful Policy Group, including Melanie Gill and her life and business partner David Keighley along with other substantially controversial figures. These deeply misogynist ideologies do not belong in the family courts.
The Centre for Social Justice, the government think-tank created by Ian Duncan-Smith has incubated and sardonically grown a worrying number of right-wing fundamentalists with a co-opted ideology of what ‘the family’ should look like. It single handedly exacerbated the fever pitch of children raised by single mother households to overwhelming. It used organisations such as CAFCASS and unqualified consultants experts to rig the data and bastardise the research. The Centre for Social Justice presented a sharpened and bias picture that single mothers are dangerous and unsafe to their children and society as a whole. The response to new wave feminism took strong hold. The backlash and holes in the research was evident.
In 2019 the Parental Alienation Study Group commissioned and fully funded research on the effects of Parental Alienation, as a way to self-support their strong ideologies. A shocking number of psychologists, doctors, healthcare workers, social workers and professionals are on this global list. Despite the very funding of its own research study, it is hard to understand correlation between the opening statement from the research published and Sir Andrew MacFarlanes’ recent judicial memo. It stated that the UK courts should no longer accept pseudo-science (junk theories not underpinned by societally accepted empirical research, like the DSM-5 and the ISD-11) in family court proceedings. The European Court of Human Rights published this with regards to the use of perpetrators abusing the court system to further terrorise their victims and seize the children from protective mothers. But CAFCASS had a different response —
“Cafcass (2019) has developed assessment tools to help practitioners in identifying if a child is experiencing alienation. However, these tools are not recommended as diagnostic tools and do not recommend therapeutic intervention. Recent developments in the proposed inclusion of PA and new diagnostic criteria in both the DSM-5 2 and ICD-113 came to nothing as the drafted amendments were followed by swift removal. Notably, the term ‘parental alienation’ was not used, rather alluded to in the form of three diagnoses: child affected by parental relationship distress; parent-child relational problem; and child psychological abuse. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which provides evidence based guidance for health and social care professions within the UK, currently does not recognise or offer guidance for working with PA.”
Would it be too far then to assume that members of such a ‘study group’, holding unscientific ideologies and fundamental acute bias, absolutely cannot be impartial, objective or ‘experts’ in legal proceedings? This statement challenges the use of the CAFCASS frameworks on parental alienation as presumptively out of touch when it comes to their own application of debunkable-junk-theories separating loved and cared for children from their sensible, good and protective parents.
The extremist supporters of parental alienation maintain that this type of “emotional harm” trumps any and all domestic abuse that the mother and the children have suffered. They speak at conferences (such as Marriage Foundation), provide signposting and advice (such as Families Need Fathers), some moved into law and legislation, MP’s and QC’s and even Judges. Going against these social policies, speaking out in opposition to covert bias, even well documented corruption, will always lead to those lone and brave individuals as being branded as crazy. The pathologisation of whistleblowers is always an unwarranted but easy target.
This tactic is therefore deployed with the most force, a tried and tested method of institutionalised gaslighting being the cornerstone of CAFCASS and parental alienation ‘experts’ alike. Holding these truth-tellers children to ransom is how experts are making vast sums of money and the parental alienation billion dollar industry booming. This isn’t a new concept, this is echoing around the world by those brave enough to speak up in every country. For years, blogs such as Centre for Social Injustice have been providing a wiki-leaks style detailed breakdown of where the corruption runs, to and from whom and what the affects of it are. Tory government policies that attack the fabric of society are more often than not aimed at women and mothers. Centre for Social Injustice has time and time again modelled the damage being done and the course these policies are eroding childrens’ welfare. However the rise in fathers and mens rights activists has become so brutal and abusive it schools domestic abusers on how to defend themselves and seize everything, including their children from their victims.
In no other industry would a government allow rogue individuals such legal power. Those that do not hold the required qualifications, regulation, professional registration should not practice and perform, advise on policy, consult and lecture, give presentations and sit on boards and committees. So why are we allowing so called experts to run riot in the family court system?
Here is a list of original consultants who designed and dreamt up the Centre for Social Justice. Under the policies created by think tanks and these individuals ensure justice for victims of abuse is absolutely unattainable.
Judges are making child arrangements orders almost entirely on unsubstantiated reports and services of unregulated experts, designed to undermine the mother-child relationship to the core. Historically this has always been successfully achieved by using erroneous mental health diagnosis, quack theories and scattered cherry-picked ‘research’ to support new policies and narratives as they see fit. There is complete disregard for the truth, safety or justice. The UK family courts have reverted to the by-gone process of historic witch-trial tactics.
Radio 4 recently touched upon the topic of unregulated unsafe ‘experts’ causing harm in the family court systems, Dr Jaime Craig of the Family Justice Council recognised these people. Similarly the House of Lords raised the issue as early as March 2020 on the dangers of unregulated providers of psychological and therapeutic services. Therefore this issue is of deeper concern having been known to Westminster for a considerable amount of time and yet still remains resolutely unregulated in the family courts.
The Parental Alienation industry will never be stopped whilst it is still profitable and legal. Judges, lawyers, solicitors, experts, public sectors all make enormous money from maximising the most sacred bond on earth; mother and child. There is no greater or stronger motivator to make a woman part with every last penny she has and get into as much debt as she can and often her family too, than to threaten her with losing her offspring. Maternal mental fortitude can never be underestimated, and the monetisation of its destruction can be exploited by sadists at every step of the way. Charging £15,000 and upwards, per “specialist assessment psychologist / forensic consultant assessors” with unaccredited vague claims of online courses with as much credible basis and training as Scientology, psychologists, parental alienation experts and their businesses can earn millions. Reports are generated from deliberate faulty instructions from bullying CAFCASS guardians, pushing unregulated quacks onto vulnerable victims of abuse, with the full knowledge of what the outcomes will be. There is no such thing as legally informed consent in these scenarios, mothers are told quite simply, do it — or else…! Unscrupulous therapists then profiteer as co-conspirators in this harm. It extorts and manipulates children, providing dangerous false memories, life-changing diagnosis and even suggesting medication, to support the ideologies of an anti-feminist, anti-motherhood, anti-single-mother families.
