Press now free to report from family courts.
 

Really unsure about this, people may not give the whole story due to feelings of invasion on their families by the press..

In two minds. I don't trust the press but the way judges sometimes speak to people in family courts is absolutely shameful, and maybe (maybe?) some transparency would improve that. Along with the decisions they make.

i think the more transparency, the better. I've never been in criminal court, but i did experience a local court where the judge behaved like a god. You really are in the lap of the gods sometimes, and if your freedoms at stake, it's scary sh!t

Honestly a lot of family courts are like this. Extremely judgemental (...) and have a habit of completely ignoring healthcare professionals and expert witnesses basically on a whim. They grant access to extremely abusive parents regularly, even when there's been things like sexual abuse, and it's legally mandated so if you're the other parent it's tough **** - if you try to go against it, custody can be removed entirely. Terrifying stuff.

I just can't understand this, why would you ever put the child back into an unsafe situation like this again. It make absolutely no sense, it's really cruel actually. Imagine being raped as an adult and someone forcing you to live with your rapist, it's exactly the same thing, worse even

these judges don't think the way normal people do, they are wired differently

Groups like "Fathers4Justice" did a very good job of convincing the legal system that "parental alienation" is a massive threat to child development and psychological safety, and that it's much more prevalent than it actually is (the idea behind it is that one parent is deliberately "demonising" the other and limiting contact out of resentment as some sort of "punishment")... when there's very little to no evidence of this happening at all, other than in some very rare cases.

I've definitely seen parents both doing this (or at least attempting to do this with their children) and accusing a parent of doing this when they're not in an attempt to exert control over the ex and try to not look like the dead beat they are (anecdotally obviously and both sexes)

I'm surprised more people don't know men who have been kept away from their child for no reason other than the ex wants him out of her life. Not only have I had it in my own family, a friend of mine does pro bono work for alienated dads and he's over subscribed.

Yeah, its very common.

It's common when the dad was actually an abusive POS behind closed doors. Just because they have a good public face doesn't mean they're being unfairly targetted by "evil women" :idc:. Some people are a sucker for a sad dad with a "poor me, I done nuffin wrong" story, though.

This.
My sisters ex and my nieces dad was abusive as ****. Has no part of my nieces life and doesn’t want to. He pretends to on social media though. He’s since fathered two more children that he doesn’t see and another one on the way with some other poor girl.

You get abusive women as well.

You don't get many parents who are going to turn down unlimited free shared childcare from a good person/responsible adult who cares for their children and when children are happy to be with them.

It's nonsense. When a child's full-time carer wants the other parent as far away as possible, there's a good reason, 99.9% of the time.

And if with this law change people do start reporting some of what's going on inside family courts, people will be shocked.

You also get spurned partners so bitter at being spurned that they refuse the other partner access to the child, forcing them to go through the long, stressful drawn out process of applying through the courts for access. Many men will give up and top themselves.

This absolutely happens but that doesn't mean there aren't women who are just awful people out there who use their kids in that way too. I have 2 examples of this from real life. Gavins ex is one, I know he wasn't an abusive pos because I've been with him for 20 plus years, he's a fantastic dad to my son and my stepson. His ex tried her best to stop him seeing my stepson, he spent years in and of court fighting for access. Now my stepson is an adult she has no relationship with him, Gav has a great relationship with him. She has two other kids with her ex husband who she just left in his care when they were pre teens and went to live abroad with her new b/f. She's never met her only grandchild who is almost 2 years old.

I have another close male relative that's going through something similar and have seen pretty conclusive evidence that his ex is pretty unhinged and using their children too, I won't go into details in that one because it's on going stuff.

That being sad of course I've also irl seen examples of dead beat and abusive fathers using their children

You know me, I'm all for women's rights and protections but that doesn't mean that there aren't awful mothers out their trying to use their children to hurt genuinely good dads too and it is a little more common than you're saying, in my experience anyway

@Quantum Boy

What is your actual job?

…yeah, I completely agree with this…working with and around families for many years, there are many causes and reasons for a custodial parent ‘using children’ and wanting to refuse access to an ex partner and sometimes it can be because of a domestic abuse/in safeguarding and consideration of the child…but sometimes it can be a ‘power and control’ that is used and that doesn’t benefit the child at all because the reasoning and motivation is much more negative than the child’s interest of having access to their other parent….separation/divorce…what comes before and after etc…?..can be a very bitter and damaging process and no more so than for a child…I can’t obviously tell any stories because they’re not mine to tell but it’s absolutely something that doesn’t involve any wrong doing by a parent that’s being denied access to their child…

…what’s heartbreaking in having such close bonds with working with the children, is the impact on them of two ‘warring’ parents…

I'm not going to part-dox myself on an aggressive right-leaning forum Parmy ffs :joker:

On the rest of it all I will say is; everyone you will talk to will have their personal examples of "unfairly-maligned alienated parent" and that's exactly what's led to family courts being weaponised and effectively used to further control and abuse ex-partners, it's a horrendous situation that's been going on unchecked for a long, long time and because of exactly what this thread is about: the courts are behind closed doors, and people are not allowed to talk about what goes on there.

I could share stories with you of children screaming and wetting themselves whilst being dragged off (occasionally with police escort) for a judge-mandated weekend stay with a parent, and the other parent not only being unable to do anything about it without being arrested, but being unable to even publicly TALK about it without being in contempt of court. Real horror stories that you would not like to believe. And the argument is always that "some contact is better than none", and that the real danger is "parents not getting along".

Hopefully this will change now and some of these abuses of power will be higlighted.

And the problem is it only takes 1 of the parents to be unreasonable or bitter to make things awful for everyone involved and of course it is the children who are most scarred afterwards

The one thing that they do differently nowadays here that they didn't do when Gavin was going through his stuff is the judges order a Section 7 report much more readily when parents seem to be at war with each other. It's basically a very detailed report carried out by professionals, extensive interviews with both parents and the children (if they're old enough) and they send this back to the judge with their own recommendations. It's a much better system then just listening to both parents in the courtroom and the judge trying to decide which one is lying.

It is very sad though when parents can't put their **** aside for the sake of their kids but like I said both of them have to do that for it to work

…what has always been done here when the courts are involved is for agencies/multiple agencies generally to spend time in the school as well in observing the children and talking to them…and the children reveal a lot of their parent/child relationship for both both parents…

Yeah, that's done more now here but when Gavin was going through it, it was literally a he said/she said situation in a courtroom unless it was a very extreme case where there were abuses reported etc They still have a long way to go though to make the system- well not perfect I'm not sure that's possible but as close to as they can

…yeah, it can never be a perfect system by nature of it, can it …but there are so many individual variations on each case…(…as there is with most things…)…and that all needs to be looked more thoroughly at in the interest of the child …I’m not sure about the freedom of the press in this, whether it’ll be a move forward or whether it’ll be another layer of complexity…it’s a landmark change, obviously…of another system that would benefit from change so it’s just to be hopeful and optimistic…