Parental alienation is being misused in family courts so much that victims of it are afraid for the future of their children … here Peter Davies, from the National Association of Alienated Parents, investigates:
The way in which alienation cases should be dealt with in England and Wales has been galvanised in the high court in recent years. The high court’s approach has recently been, helpfully and clearly, ratified by the court of appeal in the most recent authority, Re S ( Parental Alienation: Cult) [2020] EWCA CIV 568.
The current president, Sir Andrew MacFarlane, had previously made no secret of his views on the way alienation cases were dealt with in the lead in period to him becoming president of the family division during the summer of 2018. In speeches to NAGALRO (the children’s guardian trade association) and FNF he shed light upon the ‘labels’ which were commonly used and why they were unhelpful. His message was clearly that ‘behaviour’ is far more important than how it is labelled. He also spoke of the inequity which exists between the ways in which parent / child relationships are severed in the world of public law and the private law equivalents of these cases. He concluded that in private law the severence of Parent / child relationships are generally not afforded the same degree of care, scrutiny or diligence as those in public law. We agree. Courts also behave far better when dealing with qualified advocates than they do when dealing with litigants in person.
It is a sad fact that in England and Wales most PA groups promote false hope amongst families and others affected by alienation. Whether their pet ideology is Dr Childress and his 3-step AB/PA formulation, Dr William Bernet et al and their 5-step formulation or Amy Baker’s 4-step formulation does not really matter because each of these mainstream formulations actually requires the proof of large numbers of sub-steps to prove PA when what the courts require, for them to order a change of residence for example, is simply proof of harm. Furthermore, the recent caselaw shows that courts have ordered changes of residence at a lower level than a diagnosis of PA or implacable hostility. In fact, there is now a litany of caselaw showing that, in cases where PA is accepted, it has often been found that the emotional harm of a prospective change of residence exceeds the harm caused by leaving the child in the dominant care of an abusive parent. Therefore, suggesting to parents that the route to recovering their children involves proving the existence of PA and a level of harm above that needed to trigger a change of residence, is cruelly misleading vulnerable people and potentially placing any hope of recovering their children at serious risk. When alienation is suspected there is no time to loose and spending valuable time focussing upon what you feel the court needs to know, in place of what the court wants to know, is a waste of valuable time and effort.
In this article we are reproducing excerpts, together with appropriate quotes, from published speeches and judgments. This is PRIMARY EVIDENCE. As evidence goes this is some of the most reliable and best evidence available to you. At worst it comes from the high court and the most recent authority comes from the court of appeal. The court of appeal is only outranked by the supreme court. It provides excellent authority insofar as any authority might carry weight in Children Act 1989 proceedings.
I will explain in another article why precedent in the family court does not operate with the same effect as other courts. The Children Act 1989 is widely perceived as the holy grail of family law and has huge amounts of praise heaped upon it. However, our experience informs us that it stifles dissent, turns successful appeals into rare events and deprives family court decisions of the same levels of scrutiny which other branches of the law receive routinely. Lord Sumption, in giving judgment in the supreme court, expressed a view that, ‘…Courts exercising family jurisdiction do not occupy a desert island in which general legal concepts are suspended or mean something different.’ However, the hallowed and impregnable nature of the paramountcy principle has effectively smothered the usual evolution of the law by the incremental development of standards and norms via the normal conventions of precedent whilst affording excessive judicial discretion in place of clear and intelligible rules. Independence of the judiciary, intended to provide a check and balance to prospective tyrants, has therefore merely shifted tyranny downstream to the relatively unaccountable and cosseted lower family judiciary. Furthermore, as barrister Lucy Reed put it:
‘Family court rules designed to protect the privacy of vulnerable children come with a corollary: when something goes wrong, it is difficult to see it, talk about it or fix it.’
We aim to put this right by:
shining a light upon it;
opening the eyes of others;
shouting about it from the rooftops; and,
making sensible, practical and well-researched recommendations for putting things right.
This is what we are doing:
WE ARE diligently referencing cases which have been conducted by some of our most outstanding barristers and solicitors operating in the field of overcoming children’s refusal and reluctance to attend contact. Like ourselves, they are people that have SUCCEEDED to recover children in the family court. They are people who have ADAPTED to their situations in order to ACHIEVE the best outcomes for children. This is what we try to achieve with the parents we help.
WE ARE signposting you to the best information which you can get, from people with successful track records and it’s FREE.
WE ARE sharing what WORKED for us and what has been repeated by leading lawyers to work for others.
Here is what we are NOT doing:
WE ARE NOT vacuous people who think that, having failed in our own cases, we are instant experts who can influence and manipulate scores of desperate and highly vulnerable parents to follow in our footsteps.
WE ARE NOT trying to get you to part with money for information which can be freely accessed. We give our time freely to carry out diligent research and we work tirelessly to help parents apply what has worked for ourselves and others.
WE ARE NOT unquestioningly supporting the work of anyone: especially experts that have not lived through the alienation of their own children.
WE ARE NOT applying inaccurate or pejorative names to anyone. We criticise behaviour NOT people.
WE ARE NOT trying to flog you glossy click bait and dumpster filling written material nor are we interested in becoming part of any industry which does so.
WE ARE NOT trying to seduce you with our pet theories, labels and empty slogans.
WE ARE NOT trying to entice vulnerable people with ‘David Brent’ style buzz words and inducements such as claims to being ‘passionate advocates’. Passionate merely means ‘having strong feelings and beliefs’. Anyone that has succeeded in the family courts will tell you freely that, “… Feelings and beliefs are worthless in that arena. Evidence is the ‘alpha and omega’ of what matters in the court arena and there is no substitute for diligent preparation and effective research”. Leave silly slogans where they belong: outside the court doors.
In the following paragraphs we have set out the events which were the precursors ro Re L and the line of influential judgments which followed and culminated with Re S. In this way we can clearly identify behaviour which has created problems and highlight behaviour which has solved problems.
FNF KEYNOTE SPEECH 2018
In his keynote address to the Families Need Fathers Conference on 25th June 2018, MacFarlane LJ ( as he was then) referred to the debate around ‘alienation’. He told the conference of how there as a similar debate involving the diagnosis of ‘Munchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy’.
He explained that, ‘…the focus of the Family Court,’ had ‘…rightly, moved away from any psychological/psychiatric debate in order to concentrate on the particular behaviour of the particular parent in relation to the particular child in each individual case. If the behaviour was found to be abusive then action was taken, irrespective of whether or not a diagnosis of a particular personality or mental health condition in the parent could be made.”
He added that,
In my view, “alienation” should be approached in the same way. From my experience as a first instance judge, albeit now more than 7 years ago, I readily accept that in some cases a parent can, either deliberately or inadvertently, turn the mind of their child against the other parent so that the child holds a wholly negative view of that other parent where such a negative view cannot be justified by reason of any past behaviour or any aspect of the parent-child relationship. Further, whether the state of affairs has come to pass, it is likely to be emotionally harmful for the child to grow up in circumstances which maintain an unjustified and wholly negative view of the absent parent.’
In other words;
the actual behaviours and whether they are abusive matters more than the labels applied to lists of behaviours; secondly,
he had personal experience of cases involving alienation; and thirdly, alienation, involving the creation of a negative image of a parent, is likely to cause emotional harm.
#parentalalienation #worldjustice #NAAP #PETERDAVIES #fightforourchildren
