When Dangerous Rhetoric Becomes Propaganda; Families Need Fathers annual conference 2022 — part 1
I will begin with a short sociological quote I often refer to when providing support or legal assistance to parents in Family Court — Red Ants and Black Ants - the quote may have been misattributed to David Attenborough, closer study suggests it more likely taken from the Kurt Vonnegut novel, Cats Cradle, for accuracy I will give both;
“If you collect 100 black ants and 100 fire ants and put them in a glass jar nothing will happen. But if you take the jar, shake it violently and leave it on the table, the ants will start killing each other.
Reds believe that black is the enemy, while black believes that red is the enemy, when the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. The same is true in society.
Men vs Women Black vs White Faith vs Science Youngs vs Old etc…
Before we fight each other, we must ask ourselves: Who rocked the jar?” David Attenborough (allegedly)
The alternative probable origin,
“I can’t remember what Frank had fighting in the jar that day, but I can remember other bug fights we staged later on: one stag beetle against a hundred red ants, one centipede against three spiders, red ants against black ants. They won’t fight unless you keep shaking the jar. And that’s what Frank was doing, shaking, shaking the jar” Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut
The reason I provide both is so you can see the point of the allegory does not alter. The aggressor is neither Red Ant nor Black Ant, not beetle nor centipede — it is the jar shaker. Family Courts are shaking too many jars, with the explicit intention of making money fall out of them. Every hearing between any two parents creates thousands and thousands of pounds for every professional involved, solicitors, social workers, local authorities, CAFCASS officers, Ministry of Justice and everyone in between right down to the county court clerk and the security guard at the magistrates court. Do not be fooled at any time that your Childrens’ Best Interests are at the heart of the Family Courts. This is not to say that many great and good barristers, social workers and solicitors and experts do not do their jobs in earnest and with brave hearts to help families, they do, but this isn’t about them. This is about the jar.
Both sides need to breathe and take a giant step backwards from positions of immovability and polarised beliefs in order to see the bigger picture. Having attended the Families Need Fathers annual conference on Saturday 26 November 2022, it is important to share the disappointing and downright alarming propaganda and look hard at why, who and for what purpose Sir Andrew MacFarlane is shaking the Family Court jar.
Rail strikes made for an enforced hybrid conference as many paying attendees were simply unable to attend the London conference in person. Upon reflection the decision I made in the darkness of 6am to not navigate the 3+ hours of rail madness was a good decision, as the room, the attendees and the mood of the conference threatening and very aggressive, even through a screen. I should add that the organisation has attended some of my own family court hearings, private and secret hearings I hasten to add and been permitted to by Judges. I was not informed and I would never have consented. (Another issue for another day.) Liz Archer and MacFarlane were listed to give presentations as well as Jacky Tiotto from CAFCASS, this was changed on the day being replaced by CAFCASS’s Sarah Parsons instead. The title of the conference sets the tone for an antagonistic stage, “Do both parents matters?”. Safe to say, we were in for a bumpy ride. Is the tone rhetorical, insinuating or inquisitory? I cannot see how it can be the latter as we are in 2022 and it is assumed and universally accepted that of course both parents matter, so what was Families Need Fathers trying to say? That Fathers don’t matter at all, or that they should matter more than mothers or that Fathers are the victims in all this and the courts treat you unfairly? We know from so much published and credible research that this is highly untrue however it was a problem 20+ years ago, possibly longer. Times have moved on and Fathers need to stop playing the victim. The public needs to know that Fathers fair exceptionally well in Family Court these days, some would argue far better than women and especially better than victims of domestic abuse.
Paul O’Callaghan, who runs FnF has made no bones about dragging my social media profile and comments through the mud, he doesn’t know the truth about my ex-husband that he works with and the excessive violent abuse he committed and he doesn’t know the first thing about men and women if he’s naming a Fathers Rights conference toxically, Do Both Parents Matter? The implication by framing their annual conference in such a way is to whip up Fathers into a false sense of victimhood, to incite hatred and division. Now who is shaking the jar?
Liz Archer was a headline speaker, a controversial selection to say the least. This was milked for similar victim status during her talk saying she had faced threats and online abuse. What she failed to mention is that she has been the source of so many mothers and online accounts abuse against women systematically. She has dished out the stochastic terrorism along with co-ordinated others to vilify and dox many prolific accounts that she considered Rad-Fem. She leaves anyone with any experience or knowledge of family courts strongly divided; Men think she is a saviour and saint, Mothers think she is a woman-hating misogynist with an axe to grind against any feminist issue no matter how small or important. Every statistic about women’s plight in the judicial system and family courts as victims she will hijack. Polemically and unsurprisingly she delivered an eye-opening presentation piggy-backing in no hidden way off of AFCC dogma and passing off christian-rights ideology as Fathers Rights solutions. (It is vital to understand the AFCC as a Christian patriarchal organisation, that is staunchly for the man being head of the family and pro-life, anti-feminist) My personal opinion is that any department or judicial system should not be echoing or mimicking religious ideologies, let alone pushing them so openly in what is claims to be a fair and unbiased, equal and democratic society. What has gone wrong here?
Much of Liz Archers presentation focused heavily on none-UK research published by and for the AFCC — predominantly pushed is the ‘mental health interlock’ considered prevalent in all parental alienation cases. The paper I believe Liz was referring to though is this one, ‘Mental Health Consultants and Child Custody Evaluators: A discussion paper’ Liz went on later to read from sections of the following statement — the full published statement can be read in full here —
“The vast majority of separating and divorcing parents maintain safe, healthy, and positive relationships with their children; however, a small percentage of parent-child relationships remain strained and/or problematic. Children are at greater risk when parent-child contact problems are not effectively addressed and when family law professionals and others echo and intensify the polarisation within the family. This problem may be exacerbated by (1) gendered and politicised assumptions that either parental alienation or intimate partner violence is the determinative issue; (2) contradictory rhetoric about the application of research findings and the efficacy of interventions; (3) indiscriminate use of services; and (4) a lack of understanding of different perspectives, education among family law practitioners, and resources.” [AFCC and NCJFCJ JOINT STATEMENT ON PARENT-CHILD CONTACT PROBLEMS — undated]
Why is the UK Family Courts President placing unambiguous support and backing behind a pro-life, anti-women, misogynistic organisation such as AFCC ? With regards to Domestic Abuse this is the AFCC’s not so explicit acceptance that they will turn a blind eye to the allegations raised by one party, (usually mothers) in favour of Fathers;
“The presence of the following risk factors does not conclusively establish that harm will occur in the future; nor does their absence guarantee that future harm from domestic abuse will not occur:
a) High levels of violence, injury, and increases in violence, such as: increases in frequency and/or severity, attempted strangulation, forced sex, and/or assault during pregnancy;
b) Threats, willingness, and means for lethal violence, such as: threat to kill, threatened or attempted suicide, threat to harm children, threat of or harm to pets, belief in capacity to kill, fear and perception of danger by a parent who is the target of abuse, access to firearms, and/or use or threat to use a lethal weapon;
c) Excessive control, jealousy, or obsession, such as: control of daily activities, isolation, stalking and/or obsessive monitoring or tracking, and/or violent or constant jealousy;
d) Unwillingness to accept responsibility and/or willingness to evade the law, such as: avoidance of arrest for domestic violence or violation of a protection order;
e) Psychological and substance problems, such as: alcohol misuse, illegal drug use, and/or major mental illness; and/or
f) Other factors predicting risk and lethality, such as: recent separation, unemployment, and/or the presence of children in the home who are not biologically related to a partner who uses intimate partner violence. (AFCC publication 2020)
These factors, if present in a relationship, evidenced or witnessed are NOT considered factors to prevent contact with the perpetrator, nor are they ANY indicator that there is a future risk. (Just hold that thought carefully in your mind for a moment to let it sink in.)
What this provides organisations, custody evaluators, expert witnesses and Judges the ability to argue is that just because there has been abuse, is not an indicator there will be any abuse again. This is contradictory to all trauma-aware modern psychology and substantial tragic cases internationally where abusers have been granted unlimited contact and gone one to commit heinous infanticide and kill their own children and sometimes even the mothers too. We know about controlling behaviour and abusers, that their history of abuse does predict their future risk. In this country it is why we introduced Clare’s Law, allowing a partner to find out if their new partner has been abusive to a previous partner. If someone raped their ex-girlfriend or beat their ex-wife, there is a strong probability they will do it again, and they are certainly not very nice people. But according to the AFCC guidelines, Liz Archer and by association and tacit agreement MacFarlane too, they share the thought contradicting this — that abusers can be and are good fathers/parents and their past behaviour/abuse is not relevant to custody evaluation.
My experience of Family Court and the founding member of AFCC-EU as an expert witness, was precisely this. She opined strongly that rapes, assaults and strangulations are no indication that a man is a bad father, in fact, she felt they were entirely “irrelevant” to any contact agreement made or her recommendations that the children should live with him; this is despite him being visited by the Police, it being reported and documented and disclosures given by the children and injuries sustained by both children at his home. This is considered irrelevant.
The reason it is ‘irrelevant’ to AFCC and CAFCASS framework of family dynamics is that if the mother has ever suffered any abuse, trauma, adverse childhood experiences, maybe an early parental loss, childhood illness or an alcoholic parent, grown up in the care system then this can however becomes all that is relevant to custody evaluations and experts provided by CAFCASS to conduct parenting psychological assessments. And it is these experiences, usually described at attachment disorders that will be used to prove emotional harm to the children, and not the domestic abuse she has suffered at the hands of the father. The focus becomes entirely centred on the mental health of the victim and anything will and can be used to prove she is unfit.
What is important to raise about this is the repositioning that all cases that end up in family court where allegations of abuse are in the mix are instantly reframed as mental health concerns in one parent — always the alleged victim. This is a highly subjective reach to make that whilst abuse does indeed cause trauma which in turn can produce mental health declines and terrible painful issues, trauma in and of itself is not indicative of mental health being the cause of domestic abuse. This appears to be what Families Need Fathers want to convince men and the courts of, that is a mother alleges abuse, she is mentally ill. Richard Gardner echoes dimly…
This axiom is at the crux of the parental alienation debate — Parental Alienation proves there are mental health issues and mental health ‘disorders’ prove that there must be parental alienation. Abuse and trauma become lost and obscured using this convenient and largely incorrect equation.
So, lets look at what else was said.
CAFCASS’s Sarah Parson reported that there was an average 15 week wait for a section 7 report. She also said this of the DAPP courses —
(SP) CAFCASS are looking for safe ways forward to supervise contact - Moj are looking to reestablish DAPPs but i don’t think that going to happen any time soon from my understanding, the working group is underway looking at alternatives, in the interim cafcass are working with the MoJ to think about options for extending our arrangements for supervised contact to ensure that those horrendous gaps we were talking about earlier, those lengthy delays, the potential of lost relationships that could have been beneficial that there are alternatives that are acknowledged that the lack of provision is certainly a challenge.
(MacFarlane) It was very unwelcome that this provision was just stopped without anything coming in to replace it. And I’m not aware of any research that indicated it needed to be stopped, but thats a government decision and I can’t say more than that.
(Liz Archer) What I have seen research, in adoption in family interventions, in FDAK, restorative change.org.uk, did a pilot they had where there was domestic abuse it was a whole family approach, in support of the children, so even if fitting in with the AFCC model, even if there is a problem with one person within the family it does the whole family to support and embed that change in, but thats just because I’m a systemic family practitioner so that’s just my view.
Not everything said reads very well as it had some elements of not being very coherent.
Going back to the S7 report — it is ordinarily a first step in the court proceedings. It sets the trajectory of the case and should in theory be where any domestic abuse assessments should be undertaken, however, Sarah Parsons reported that these are being preferentially replaced instead with Child Impact Assessments. Important then to question who, when and how domestic abuse is to be established as any early concern in a case, because if it isn’t being assessed from the start, then it certainly can’t be raised later down the line. To anyone with any knowledge of family law this would appear to be a deliberate attempt to remove any allegations of domestic abuse ever seeing the light of children’s act proceedings. There could be many carefully worded answers from fathers rights and CAFCASS and the Ministry of Justice to explain why the “interests of the child must come first” yes, we know that, but, not if one parent is abusing another. Why would CAFCASS want to remove the only tiny part of domestic abuse consideration they have which is already woefully inadequate and under-used, from the start of each case?
FnF seemed persistent, agitated and aggressively dogmatic that mothers are only preventing fathers from having 50/50 access because of financial motivation and vindictiveness. Sorry boys, but that’s an own goal argument you appear to have missed the point of — Mothers are rightfully arguing that feckless, useless, abusive fathers who did little to no parenting whilst in the relationship only want 50/50 care post separation because they don’t want to part with a single penny to the mothers. Building on that Fathers who are filing for full custody and changes of residency who were perfectly happy to go to work every day and leave their wives and partners mothering and parenting before the separation must be viewed as extremely abusive when demanding sole custody post-separation in order to protect their financial assets and any division of them as decisions on finances are always based on with whom the children reside the majority of the time. If a child lives even 60/40 with Mother and Father, the father would still have to pay child support. Only a shared care agreement, which FnF want to be default in each case and application made, will prevent any division of assets or payments ongoing. Every member of FnF has and will push the hard party line that mothers only want money! The reverse side of the coin is that fathers do not and will not pay money to a home or an ex they don’t feel they get the direct benefit of. Which is why less than half of fathers pay any child support at all.
CAFCASS and Judges refuse to consider financial abuse as either motivation or indication of wider abuse patterns when in children’s act proceedings. If a wealthy father decides to withhold school fees and global maintenance payments that are court ordered, he can do so for up to 90 days before the mother can apply to enforce the order- less than 16% of enforcement applications are successful. My delightful wealthy banker ex would do this periodically for 89 days at a time, especially and deliberately in the run up to each Christmas. Which for years in a row meant that the children and I were absolutely broke by December and he made the payments each time just before New Years Eve instead long after Father Christmas was supposed to come. Judges and CAFCASS officers will blank their ears to such cries of — but this is financial control and serious abuse that directly impacts the children. These are ignored, and for Fathers Rights groups and Mens Rights Extremists, like many Parental Alienation ‘experts’, they will and do invert this allegation that the mother is financially ‘grabbing’ and it is she who is the abuser or ‘organ grinder’ as one particularly despicable court expert wrote in her report about alleged alienation, despite the financial awards being court ordered as part of the divorce settlement in that case. She took ito upon herself to comment directly that it was ‘unfair’ that he should have to pay such large sums of money to the mother and work so hard to do so. Certainly not her place to comment on a very experienced Judges comprehensive judgement and why, because that Judge had found the father to be “excessively controlling”.
FnF want to ensure that Stay at Home Mothers, (SAHM) should not to be assisted in their bid for separation and is a consistent and key indoctrination of the AFCC, CAFCASS and Centre for Social Justice and Governments. British policy think tanks and various pro-marriage groups and ministers are determined to make single motherhood as unattractive as possible. It damages the patriarchy. What FnF, CAFCASS, Social Work England, Family Justice Council and certainly Parental Alienation experts will not abide, is that many fathers are emotionally and physically absent, lazy and can be very abusive when present in the family home. For many SAHM’s leaving an abuser is not in the least bit an attractive prospect in reality, they must remove their children from the only safety and home they know, comforts that they know and usually a lot of what they have behind, all in order to feel free of the abuse without any financial security and limited career prospects after career breaks to raise their families. There is absolutely NO benefit for a mother to then falsely claim domestic abuse and this is a perverse suggestion. Yet this was a constant suggestion raised by members of the conference and acknoweldged by the hosts as being, in their opinion, the only reason mothers are alleging abuse — in order to claim legal aid.
Legal Aid is difficult to get after significant cuts made to it in 2013 and new thresholds and guidelines introduced.
What counts as evidence
You’ll usually need to show that you or your children were at risk of harm from an ex-partner.
You can ask for evidence from:
- the courts
- the police
- a multi-agency risk assessment conference (MARAC)
- social services
- a health professional, for example a doctor, nurse, midwife, psychologist or health visitor
- a refuge manager
- a domestic violence support service
- your bank, for example credit card accounts, loan documents and statements
- your employer, or education or training provider
- the provider of any benefits you’ve received
(Taken from Government website on eligibility the whole page can be read with the link above.)
Self-reported abuse is not sufficient enough evidence to be awarded legal aid, it is also means tested and comes with a lot of time and intrusion during the assessment period. Bank accounts, savings and assets are all assessed first, even those on benefits do not automatically qualify. Women who allege abuse are not automatically awarded Legal Aid, as is commonly misunderstood. If this were the case then Fathers could simply easily do exactly the same, game the system in the same way they accuse women of doing and everyone would all be legally aided! It is an obvious convenient lie designed by Fathers Rights groups to inflame further “femi-nazi” thinking, a word pushed by FnF.
There appeared to be a pervasive assumption that all allegations of abuse were false, made substantively worse by FnF pushing the idea that any allegation of abuse not decided at by a court or ignored in the proceedings is proof that the abuse did not happen.
I spoke with a family barrister with 30 years at the barr, she said that in her whole career she knew of perhaps a handful, perhaps 5, of truly completely false allegations. That has also been my limited experience of supporting and advocating for women in family litigation too. I have come across 2 cases where it was quite clear, the mother freely admitted to me she made up the allegations for the benefit of misleading the court. I immediately discontinued my support and communication with her and made sure she knew why. I suspect any ethical person would do the same, whether they were an IDVA, a support worker, social worker or barrister. We do not encourage and never sustain false allegations of abuse. Ever.
Practice Direction 12J, the finding of facts in matters of abuse was created to establish a factual matrix upon which to base correct future contact for children safely with the best parent. Where findings are not found it is often because by the very nature of domestic abuse, there can be limited concrete evidence or witnesses. It is naturally contested strongly by the perpetrator; becoming a ‘he said — she said’ battleground, very wrongly labelled as ‘High Conflict’ and sadly for the victims called “Intimate or Inter-Personal Violence”. This term makes both parties equally to blame, and is so traumatising for victims to hear. FnF and its members feel strongly that where findings are not found that victims should be criminally charged and prosecuted. This is so dangerous and sickening given that family court works differently to criminal law, instead working on a basis of probability that is 51%/49% — Judges must make a decision based on the most likely version of events when there is no evidence and conflicting versions from each party. Judges are highly skeptical of a crying and incoherent victim with sketchy memory in comparison to a cool, calm and collected, coherent and poised well spoken and rehearsed abuser. I would argue that this must apply to all the fathers who make baseless allegations and persistent smear campaigns against mothers too. This happens all to commonly.
An extract of what Sir MacFarlane did say at the FnF conference on this issue; (PC is Paul O’Callaghan, MF is Sir MacFarlane)
“PC — QLR’s Qualified Legal Representatives, and I think it comes from a guidance that you put out as to whether or not Litigants in Person being assessed as to whether or not they are in a position to cross examine in court. Can you say a little more about QLR’s and what this situation is?
MF - Certainly, yes, it hasn’t come from me although obviously I have put guidance out, but its in the Act, in the Domestic Abuse Act, and as you will all know for some years there has been a less than satisfactory situation where a Judge or Magistrate concludes that the person who’s accused of being the perpetrator of harm is acting in person that court decides that it would be unfair impractical, wrong for that person to directly cross -examine the person making the allegations and so the Judge has been the person has has asked the questions of that party. The ACt changes that and it says that the court will appoint a qualified legal representative, a QLR to ask those questions on behalf of that litigant in person, but its not, I haven’t had notice of this questions, I haven;t got the provision in front of me, but there are two categories of case, 1 is where the litigant in person has been found guilty of criminal offences in a list, or there have been other findings that they have been the perpetrator of harm, then the Act says the court must appoint a QLR, in other case there’s a matter of discretion for the court as to whether they do. But if the court decides that the witness who’s going to cross examined is vulnerable then it must appoint a QLR, the problem with it is that there aren’t that many QLR’s that have been trained so far and there are haphazard numbers, if I can put it that way, of them in different pockets of the country and so there are concerted efforts now being made to train up QLR’s. It came in in the beginning of September and there have been very few cases that have come to court where the hearings have actually taken place, it applies to hearings that were issued after the date, the beginning of September, so it’s only now that it’s really coming home to have the QLR there. So I can talk more about it, but that’s, in a nutshell, what it is and how it comes to be.
PC - I think possibly Sir Andrew, its something maybe we might need a follow up meeting with then?
MF - I think it really is important to your organisation to know about this and I’m happy to have a meeting with you about it. I did have a meeting with Families Need Fathers representatives only 5 weeks ago so I’m very happy to meet about these things as and when there is a need to do so.
PC - If I can Sir Andrew take you to a question that you do know about and forgive me because I, I’ve had some questions thrown at me ….
MF — I, I Don’t mind, I was just apologising for not having…
PC — I’ll go to question 7 which is, one of the ones that was pre-written in and it says, “when courts consider sending a parent on a domestic violence course, why should the burden of proof be on — why SHOULDN’T Ithink that should read, — the burden of proof be beyond reasonable doubts, rather than the 51–49 at the moment?” Basically we know that in civil law that um, its whats the Judge decides happens, the civil law burden of proof, well what the question I think is asking is why shouldn’t it be beyond reasonable doubt?
MF — Oh — its because its not a criminal court! That’s in a way a stupid answer isn’t it. But thats the legal answer. And all of the facts that are found in family cases are determined on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt and that applies to care proceedings, social services, child abuse of the highest order, including homicide of a child, its on the balance of probabilities and I’m not sure I understand, its particle because of the way the question is phrased, is the thought behind it that um, you've got an individual who’s being asked to go on a domestic violence course, they don’t accept that they’ve been violent, well why should they be made to go on a course when they don’t accept it, and the court only feels its probable that they were a perpetrator? I think that’s what probably behind it? I get that, I can see that point. But the situation for the individual wouldn’t actually be any different, would it, if the burden of proof was beyond reasonable doubt. You’ve got the Judge saying — I’m sure you’re the perpetrator and the individuals saying — no I’m not. And So I don’t think it would necessarily solve the problem, the evidence would be even clearer, to get to that standard, but in order to make that change it would be a fundamental change to the whole approach to the determination of facts in in Family Cases. I think it’s beyond contemplation that it would ever be changed.
We need to have a conversation on why domestic violence in Family Court is not considered a criminal act and carry a criminal procedural approach. I think most victims of domestic abuse are shattered by the realisation that all of their abuse will never be dealt with in a way that sanctions their abuser. It is absolutely useless to deal with domestic violence in Family Court. It is a criminal offence.
Any victim of domestic abuse will tell you one of the biggest hurdles they always face is being believed. What goes on behind closed doors is rarely known by anyone but the two people involved. One said it happened, the other said it didn’t and she’s invariably considered the liar. The assumption that all men are innocent and all women are liars is a dangerous myth to support an entire movement on. The affects of the abuse however are known, health, mental well-being, isolation, depression, anxiety, PTSD, these can and do last for months and years past the events and incidents. Victims don’t lie about these affects. Parental Alienation experts are consistently assessing trauma in victims as proof of incapacity to parent and disordered mental health or worse. Cafcass are doing the same, without the training or skills to do so. We should all be concerned about custody evaluators being brought into the mix, my fear is this is precisely what MacFarlane was referring to later in his address.
Many mothers do not raise the abuse they suffered straight away to avoid their children being taken from them. If you tell the Police that your ex has been abusing you, they have to make a referral to Social Services, who will invariably and in every single instance be told by the father, ‘she is crazy/ she’s making it up/ she’s the abuser/ I’m the victim/ She’s just after my money/ She’s mentally ill/ She’s an alcoholic/ She’s an unfit mother…” And within a blink of an eye victims find themselves in family court being accused of Parental Alienation. Fathers take custody, mothers are mentally and physically destroyed with years and years of abusive litigation and some end up killing themselves through either grief or mental exhaustion. FnF say otherwise. They would. (Don’t forget the jar…)
CAFCASS also mentioned a new program that they are piloting in Merseyside, called Early Neutral Intervention. Of course this sounds, for the briefest of moments really great — equality driven, gender neutral, child-focused. Its not. Neutral Intervention will do the same for the coffers as the every other manifestation of ills they replicate from the AFCC.
There is nothing on CAFCASS website about this pilot scheme nor anything obviously published in the public, but we could make guesses that the format and reasoning of it is somewhat similar to what is described here by Liverpool chambers, Unit.
This process again bypasses the justice system for victims of abuse, and places an arbitrator in the position of judge long before any facts or evidence has been considered. Case trajectory is set early and is rarely moveable once the train is in motion, with CAFCASS fixating on seeking confirmation bias gathering evidence to secure the outcomes and reports that have been pre-determined. There is scant regard for the truth in these reports and cherry-picked evidence that supports one side only. The alienation and dichotomous thinking happens more on the part of CAFCASS and Local Authority and Parental Alienation experts social than anywhere else. Specific ‘experts’ are drafted in, by CAFCASS, at their insistence and sometimes force, to confirm the bias outcome they are seeking and cement the prognosis. Children’s voices, regardless of age are being unilaterally removed from every part of the process by CAFCASS and the abusive parent. By claiming the child’s views are obscured by a mentally-ill parent brainwashing them, their experiences are disqualified and their voices muted permanently. The convenience of this cannot be underestimated, especially in older and brighter children who would otherwise be considered perfectly competent and reliable sources.
Mothers and Fathers do not remain in romantic relationships and together for a good reason. Those that do not go to court or require any legal interventions are the ones that simply rather sadly no longer wanted to be together, were sensible about it, went their separate ways and remained on good terms. This is easy when there is no abuse involved. Many victims of abuse really try their hardest to do this, we rarely succeed. There is no such thing as High Conflict relationships or High Conflict cases. There is an aggressor and a defender. Conflict is not equal. Neutral Intervention is therefore a glamorous way to rephrase that courts will not sanction or acknowledge the abusers actions and hold the victim equally culpable. The reality of that dynamic is that CAFCASS are siding with the abuser in totality and actually inflicting further abuse upon the victim by ignoring and silencing their lived experience as valid. The profound effects of such “Neutrality” is enforced oppression for victims. If couples were at a neutral starting position when separating, on equal ground, economically and socially, then there wouldn’t be a need for intervention.
Mothers who may have 3 or even 4 children all at Primary School age are at a significant disadvantage to find suitable work to support themselves and their children, maintain a home and career and be fully emotionally and physically present. Mothers with young children often turn to term-time only jobs, dinner-ladies, teaching assistants, school club monitors etc, to remain the parent that does all the school runs, takes the time off when the children are unwell, shops, cooks, cleans, uniform wrangler and so much more, while often Dad leaves early, gets back around dinner time and hangs out with the kids at the weekends, hopefully. There are variations to this theme, but these are the exceptions rather than the rules. So why Fathers Rights groups seem to challenge this standard practice and cry wolf is unfathomable to most mothers who find themselves in Family Courts.
Equality in the family home prior to the separation of parents is the only concrete indicator to equality after the separation, and neither the Family Justice Council, CAFCASS nor the parental alienation experts are willing to acknowledge this. This is endangering victims of abuse, children and happy recoveries post-separation for everyone.
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Balanced and rational thinking seemed in real derth on Saturday morning, and far from being a conference I would have said it was more like a rally. It was group-think mob mentality with one sided agenda spreading misleading false information. It felt like listening to a Trump rally. It is nothing more than a Sexist Boys Club.
More of the conference will be written up in the next few days, predominately MacFarlanes main address to the FnF attendees. I have been forced to split the articles into 3 in order to make them somewhat digestable, please look out for the next parts.
