Hello, it's Claudia here and you're listening to the Slow Newscast from Tortoise. This week, the ruthless fight for child custody. Tortoise reporter Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism specialise in reporting on the family courts. They reported on a vast range of the child protection issues that are heard by family judges and have had to push for landmark legal judgements to be published. So they're well versed in the court system.
Now Louise and Hannah have teamed up to investigate how this system works and whether the court is failing the very children it exists to protect. I'll hand over to them now. Every child deserves to have a relationship with both parents and alienation stops that which cannot be right.
When it comes to family courts and child custody, there's really one rule. What's best for the children? There's clear case law that says that it's in the children's best interest to have a meaningful relationship with both parents.
And this is a story about those best interests, about what happens when parents are at loggerheads because one side alleges the other has brainwashed the child against them. Sometimes a child may have witnessed a parent do awful things and they're scared. And what do you do when a child says they don't want to see one of their parents? Do you believe them? Am I being melodramatic? I'm not being believed but I tell the truth. I want to be heard but the world doesn't care. I need it to stop.
It's a question where there's not always a right answer, but family court judges can't duck the question. And in trying to work the answer out, there's one idea that's increasingly gained traction. I've seen all kinds of high conflict, nasty things that happen in families. Parental alienation is one of these things.
parental alienation. My definition of parental alienation is where the adult parent puts their needs or in this case their hatred of another partner and they wish to destroy the other partner on the shoulders of their very fragile children.
Parental alienation is essentially the idea that one parent can manipulate their child or children to reject the other parent. Parental alienation is extremely rare and it can have a wide ranging of facts on the development of the child. It has created two camps pitted against each other. On one side are those who say this happens frequently, that it's emotional abuse of children and it can be diagnosed and treated.
The other side says it happens rarely, and when it's alleged, other factors are often in play, including a child's reaction to witnessing domestic abuse. The concept stems from the theory of parental alienation syndrome, which was coined in the 1980s by New York psychiatrist Richard Gardner.
He appeared as an expert witness in the US in hundreds of child custody cases from the mid-80s onwards, most often giving evidence on behalf of fathers accused of sexually abusing their children. According to academics, Gardner created and then marketed parental alienation syndrome as a way of refuting mother's claims of child abuse. Courts acted on his recommendations, meaning in some instances children were transferred to the care of the parent accused of abuse.
Outside the family courts, professionals are divided between those who believe parental alienation is rampant and those who believe it's rare. And the weight of academic research does suggest that instances of true parental alienation are few and far between. The difficulty facing judges is how to make sense of that external debate when faced with the rising number of allegations of parental alienation.
To help them decide whether parental alienation has happened and what they should do with children when it has, they seek advice. These are the expert witnesses. They're jointly instructed by the court on behalf of both parents. They're meant to be neutral and approach the family objectively. But what happens when that objectivity is brought into question? I feel like someone's just died when I'm having to say goodbye to my mum. My life's about to get completely ruined in a few days and I can hardly do anything to stop it.
In recent years, a lot of barristers and families have told us there's been an increase in the number of family court cases where parental alienation is alleged. There's no official data by the number of cases featuring allegations of parental alienation in the family courts, but an analysis of publicly available judgments by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggests a more than ten-fold rise in alienation cases over the last decade.
And I've spent a lot of time listening to allegations and counter allegations of parental alienation and domestic abuse. Typically, you'll encounter the two together. And I've watched judges wrestle with the evidence. And it's become clear that over the last decade, the family justice system has been on something of a journey when it comes to parental alienation.
In 2017, Anthony Douglas, the then-chief executive of Kafka's, the organisation which represents children's interests in family court cases, spoke about where the court's thinking needed to be.
when we talk publicly about parental alienation. The point is to acknowledge its existence and to build it into thinking in every high conflict text. But just four years later, the country's top family judge, Sir Andrew McFarland, published a striking memo on the use of experts, including those who are pine on parental alienation, in which he states,
pseudoscience, which is not based on any established body of knowledge, will be inadmissible in a family court.
To be clear, Sir Andrew McFarland is not saying parental alienation doesn't exist. He's saying, unevidenced claims that it's a medically diagnosable syndrome will no longer be accepted in the family courts. Instead, judges must look for alienating behaviours on the part of a parent. In the space between these two moments, hundreds of families have found themselves caught in a grey area.
where what was once held as true has now been examined, found wanting and substantially undermined. So when couples battling for custody find themselves in court, the importance of the truly impartial independent expert is more important than ever.
Because of detailed concerns that have been raised with both of us about these court-appointed experts for several years now, we needed to understand exactly how as they present themselves to parents, he get in touch, saying that they have been unjustifiably prevented from having contact with their children.
And so we began an undercover investigation. We thought about it long and hard. Going undercover is a last resort, but we believed we had no other way to hear the truth about the people at the heart of this story. And it's a story we believe is strongly in the public interest. After all, these experts make recommendations to the courts that lead to life-changing consequences for children.
So we created Charlie Thomas, a separated dad who was worried that his contact with his two daughters was falling away a couple of years after splitting up with his wife. Under the alias of Charlie, a reporter colleague started setting up sessions with psychologist experts who were instructed in these types of cases.
We began looking into a number of court-pointed experts who give evidence on parental alienation, and we chose a well-known expert who's frequently been instructed by the family courts, Melanie Gill.
Melanie Gill describes herself as a specialized psychologist, attachment expert, and forensic consultant with more than 15 years experience working as a court witness in parental alienation cases. And if you're a parent concerned about your child refusing to spend time with you, according to online forums, she's the person to speak to. But if you speak to some lawyers, read published judgments, and hear from some parents she's assessed, concerns have emerged about her court work.
Over the last two years, I've seen a dozen parental alienation cases play out in court with 10 of them involving a psychologist expert witness. And I've read about many more in published judgments. Some of the cases I've seen featured regulated professionals who can be struck off if there are concerns about bad practice. But others are not regulated.
so there's no professional accountability mechanism. In one case, despite findings by the court that a father had domestically abused a mother, she was threatened with having her child forcibly transferred to her ex after an expert said she had alienated the child from the father.
In another, a mother didn't see her children for nearly two years after they were ordered to go and live with their father. He would claim she'd been alienated and a number of parental alienation experts who were brought onto the case agreed. In other cases, mothers have been left with extremely restricted supervised contact after having been found to be alienators or causing emotional harm through alienation. Some have complained to me that convicted criminals have more contact with their children.
In one further case, an expert's evidence was debunked on the witness stand to such an extent that the judge refused to follow her advice to the court. In that last case, the expert witness was Melanie Gill.
That's Melanie Gill, who on her own account has appeared in 150 to 200 court cases. We can't verify that number, but we do know she has been found to be a credible witness. We've identified 15 published judgments relating to cases in which Melanie Gill has given evidence as an expert witness.
In autumn last year, our undercover dad here at Tortoise clicked on a Zoom link to start his first session with Melanie Gill. Melanie Gill doesn't know she's being recorded here. As far as she's aware, she's speaking to a dad of two young children who's worried he might need to go to court to make sure he can keep seeing his daughters. I'm all right. It's a good picture, my dog. Can you hear me, OK? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, yes, yes. No, you're something clear as a bell.
In the end, Charlie has two sessions, one of around 45 minutes, the second slightly shorter. Melanie Gill doesn't charge him for these.
you're going to hear some selected extracts from these conversations. So we end up in a lot of arguments about that. And the arguments got very loud and they didn't stop. And so in the end, it became like, well, she can't live anymore. So it was, it was a bad, like I say, it was all right. It was a divorce. It was pretty awful, I'll be honest with you. And Melanie Girls keen to help.
right one place ever called once right okay when when was that towards the end or and who called the police she did sorry she did she did she did okay and what happened well they came and they had a word and like there was no um you know I hadn't hit her or anything and so they I mean they just said
Like long and shortly was they said shut up, but it was not, you know, it was no one was arrested or anything. She seems to be taking Charlie's account at face value. She suggests Charlie could find out what might be on his police record. He tells her his kids say he's angry. Gil tells Charlie that she can do an assessment of him to work out what kind of an angry person he is.
There's lots and lots of things that we could do to get you in the best place possible so there can't be any objection. She means if he ends up in court so that any objections made by his ex team spending time with the children can be countered. And she addresses Charlie's worries about his case ending up in court. What's all the anger is it and what can we do about it? There's lots and lots of things that we could do to get you in the best place possible so there can't be any objections. OK. OK.
You know, we're in an unfortunate position now where the feminist perspective on men and domestic conflict is so biased. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're, we're, which is why, you know, they, I was witch hunted and what have you because I've been working on these cases and getting to the bottom of, right. I take these, you know, and I'm feminists just didn't like that because at the end of the day, they said I was against women.
So this way I explained something so yeah, so size mate ed was actually I didn't understand what was happening because size mate ed said something which I now makes a little sense. Yes, thank you. Yeah, I don't know. I had radical feminists and the Guardian newspaper and a bunch of
very controlling clinical psychologist who were trying to take over all this work. The whole court system more ignorant. I'm doing like a sausage factory and, you know, it's just, it's ludicrous. What was that then? What was happening? Well, it was one mother. Well, no, it wasn't. It was six cases with mothers. There's a huge international movement to counsel experts in this field and say that parental alienation doesn't exist.
and that it is being used by violent fathers to gain control of children over victim mothers. And that is international. Wow.
We played the recordings of the undercover calls to Dr. Jamie Craig, a consultant clinical psychologist with more than 20 years experience as an expert witness in the family courts. Jamie Craig helped to write the new guidance for judges on how to approach allegations of parental alienation. To paraphrase, the guidance says that a court should grasp that domestic abuse is rife, can amount to a serious crime, and that true parental alienation is by comparison rare.
If domestic abuse is found by a judge to have occurred, then a child might justifiably not want to spend time with the abusive parent, and the victim, typically the mother, might be so traumatized that she can't be expected to share custody. We should add, Jamie Craig does believe that parental alienation can happen. He has made the recommendation that a child should be removed, but very rarely.
I'm trying to work out whether this is going to go to court, and I suppose in the end it probably will. Well, it might not. I mean, the point is, is that, you know, what I need to know, because I can advise one side, I can assess one side, and I can assess the children. She's saying that she can assess one side, and she can advise one side and assess the children. So, I mean, in nowhere in the family courts, do we ever have someone
on one side they're jointly appointed experts and so she's suggesting that she would get involved or could be asked to get involved on one side. Jamie says that Charlie's being misled here into thinking he can have an assessment that will help his case. To be clear in family proceedings in this country nobody gets to have a single expert speaking on their behalf. All experts are jointly instructed and their duty is solely to the court.
In part of their conversation, Melanie Gill is telling Charlie about violence and who commits it. But the feminism is marching towards men, all men are violent and only women are victims, when in fact, what you see in figures throughout the world is actually its evening up. This is not quite true. Yes, men are victims of domestic abuse, of course they are. But it's universally gendered and disproportionately affects women and girls.
It was panicking me really, this idea that I can't have the children. It's like me really makes me... If you haven't been absolutely right, and a moral right to your children, your children have an attachment relationship with you which cannot be broken, it's brain to brain, body to body. So attachment isn't brain to brain. Attachment is by experience. It's very seductive.
You know, if you were a man looking for help, you'd feel so, so enamored with this person, wouldn't you? Because they're offering such compelling, authoritative advice. You know, when you try and destroy them to take it away, children are very, very damaged. They are brain damaged.
It's making claims about brains that has got no basis in any kind of scientific literature. I mean, obviously our thoughts and emotions happen in our brains, but suggest to brain damage that you could find on a scan. It's just nonsense.
Some of what Melanie Gill has said may appear to be quite marginal, but in a family court case, scrupulous fairness and independence from an expert witness is key. The fate of a parent and a child can turn on points that may not seem much to an outsider, but in court, taken cumulatively, can alter the outcome of a case.
The Bureau of Investigation of Journalism has identified cases of six mothers, who between them have had 11 children removed from their care, after Melanie Gill told the family court they had alienated them from their fathers. In all but one of the cases, the mothers had either no contact or very limited supervised contact with their children thereafter. Charlie is not sure what he might face if the case goes to court. Throughout the call, Melanie Gill is reassuring.
The thing that worries me, okay, honestly, honestly, is that if she points out, if she sees the police record, which was not my finest hour, does that give her, does that play into that whole feminist argument? Yeah. So what happens, how do I do deal with that? Don't worry about some of the cases I've done, the police will have been called like 70 times.
Okay. Okay. That's not the point. Yeah, that's the point. The point is, is if the police have been called 70 times, what I say is, well, there's a set of done, they're all NFA, not further action. And the police themselves are going, something funny is going on here. False allegations are a big thing in these cases. Massive.
I've done one, I've done one of the webinars, I've talked on the game. Huge. So I'm forensically trained. You can see why they hated me. I assess risk and I assess credibility. I assess, you know, veracity as well. So our children lying. Okay. Right. Lying, that's what I assess.
We do not have assessments of veracity, whether children are lying or not. That was discredited a long time ago when expert witnesses are not asked to do that. At this point, Jamie says, Melanie Gill is contradicting both the position of the British Psychological Society and case law.
We don't ask experts to wade in and say, has a child lied here or not, for good reason. So I'm really troubled that she says that she can assess risk because she's got no qualifications to assess risk. As the first call begins to wrap up, Charlie's obviously still worried about his anger issues and how they might come across in court.
Yeah, and it's sortable. It's sortable. Thank you. But if we, you know, if you can get to it early, like you're trying to do, then that's better.
Melanie Gill is speaking freely here, and what she believes is a private conversation, and we should stress this isn't a formal assessment. But even allowing some latitude for that, Charlie has contacted her as a professional, potentially as an expert witness. Melanie Gill is not regulated by any statutory professional body, and the new guidance is clear that any expert working on these highly sensitive cases should be regulated.
A few weeks later, Charlie is on another call with Melanie Gell.
No, actually, no, but I've heard a couple of bros talking about you. I mean, I mean, you can see what the hell I'm talking about. Okay, cool. Melanie Gill knows the tide is turning against her. Remember Sir Andrew MacFarlane talking about not tolerating pseudoscience in the family court.
But then, you know, Macfarlane is weak. Wasn't Macfarlane? Wasn't Macfarlane? The president of the family division is weak. He doesn't have enough knowledge, and he's a bit like, um, Welby. I don't think... They'll want the Archbishop. Yeah. I think it's like Welby in, uh, his well meaning, but Socky is held. Wow. I didn't realize it was so... Peritugal. Well, I mean, yeah. Macfarlane's like a nice dicker.
So what we're getting is this cohort of judges who are coming in who haven't got a bloody clue. And, you know, in the last year, I've been in court, the last parental alienation case, I would glass too. The judge was completely nuttly biased.
both female judges, both completely and utterly biased because what they're all concentrating on is domestic violence against women because the narrative spun internationally by radical feminism is the, you know, the patriarchy, toxic masculinity. You know, that is now in tragedy. You look at our government now and that's what the
That's what they're, you know, pushing as well. You know, all men of Ireland, all women of victims. When you listen to these recordings, what becomes clear is that the politicization of this issue, whether parental alienation exists and what causes it, has compromised the neutrality of this expert witness who has made recommendations in hundreds of cases. What is also clear is that the family court should not be a place where feminism is on trial.
I have an interest in particular in the cases involving and alienating behaviours, the rest of the views of my food, that's all. Justin Nagaras is a barrister with more than 30 years experience in family courts, working solely on cases involving children. We asked him about parental alienation allegations and how they play out in family court cases. I think there's been a gradual shift to the extent now whereby it's
but it's an allegation which you will see, you know, in a pretty significant majority of cases, where particularly domestic abuse and or reluctant for a child to see a parent is alleged. It almost invariably now, the counter-allocation will be to use the odd phrase, you know, this is correct by the notion.
It's almost always used as a shield rather than a spear, I think it's the phrase. I've never dealt with the case where that's the lead allegation as it were before, which I think tells its own story. What we were struck by listening to the full 90 minutes of these two undercover calls is just how often Melanie Gill implies that women are deploying allegations of domestic abuse to trick the courts.
I'm Natalia Malman-Petrizala, and from the BBC, this is extreme. Peak danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive.
If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. My whole life, she inverted, manipulated, weaponized or just simply said, I was a liar. This is Erin. It's not her real name, and she's been voiced up because we're not allowed by law to identify her.
Everything that I thought was real, she turned upside down on its head and flipped it. When Erin split up from her husband, she found herself in the family court when he applied for their children to live with him. The court appointed expert witness, Melanie Gill. Erin had misgivings about Melanie Gill, but she didn't have a lawyer representing her at first, so she went along with it.
my whole history my whole life every experience that i had she'd either vanished it away or said that wasn't how i remember it that she had painted me as somebody who had played a long game of making false allegations to the gp about my domestic abuse.
Erin had reported that her husband had been abusive. We've seen police documentation and GP's records of one disturbing incident in particular, and documentation which states that her injuries correlate with her allegations. But Melanie Gill didn't consider any of the abusive incidents to be relevant to her final recommendations.
I did describe that he had really, really beaten the crap out of me on holiday and that he really, he'd strangled me, threatened to kill me. Marnie Gill had come to their family home to do a full assessment. She made quite a lot of comment in the first few minutes. Why on earth was I all dressed up for her?
She was like, are you trying to impress me? I was like, I've just come from prize giving, it's sorry, this isn't for you.
She said something really strange. And I do hope that this is remembered. I hope I'm not putting words up. But she said something really strange in the first few minutes. This is before we've even all sat down. So that first kind of few moments when everyone's on their feet. And she said, you do realize why I'm here.
And I said, you're here to do an assessment. And she said, no, I'm here to work out why you think these children shouldn't see their father. And I said, well, that's not quite how I understood it to be. And she just cut me off immediately kind of before I'd even finish the sentence.
And she said, even when children have been sexually abused, they can still love that parent. And she said, and it's not your right to stop them from seeing him. Erin made a formal written application as well as further oral applications in court for permission to instruct another expert. But permission was refused by the judge. The judgment in that case read as follows.
I accepted the evidence of Miss Gill that domestic abuse has an effect, but its effect, even if it were found as asserted by the mother, is not continuing. The underlying reasoning being that domestic abuse alleged is not the principle cause for the mother's continuing issues.
It might have exacerbated it, but rather the effect of childhood experiences coupled with a difficult relationship with her mother and adolescence is what is affecting her relationship with the father and the children, respectively.
Mainly on the basis of Gil's report, but also with support from the Children's Guardian and the local authority, the judge explained that the welfare of the children required that they temporarily move to the home of their father. And that's what the judge was originally contemplating. He thought it was going to be a temporary situation.
But Melanie Gill had recommended to the court that Erin should undertake a particular type of therapy known as schema therapy. Erin contacted more than 100 schema therapists, including the Schema Institute in London. She told us none of them thought she needed it, and none of them would offer it to her. Unable to fulfill the requirements of the court, it's been more than five years since she has been allowed any contact with her children.
She painted a picture that if the children had been left with me, that they would have quite literally been ruined. Their lives would have been ruined.
And at that point, they'd been with me for 12 years and were the most wonderful children imaginable. They were so good and they were so sweet and they were so funny and smart and had so much fun. When we asked her about the last time she saw her children, she can't go on.
We approached Melanie Gail and asked her to respond to all the points raised in our reporting. In her response, she said that we had distorted and conflated numerous points. The narrative and questioning continue to show a significant gap in your understanding of regulation and evidence-based assessments on these specific cases, and the very complex nature of family dynamics involved, and particularly the effects on children.
Articles of this nature cause immeasurable distress to families in these cases and the professionals involved.
Subsequently, Melanie Gill has also done an online chat addressing some of the concerns we raised in the podcast. As part of her response, she said that it wasn't her finest hour and that she had been taking medication. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said, we share the concerns about these unregulated experts and we are working with the Family Procedure Rules Committee to prevent them from giving evidence in the family courts.
but the problem is not just Melanie Gill, arguably it's the way in which the family justice system enables people like her to act as expert witnesses. I'm still astounded actually sometimes when you go to the High Court and individuals are put forward as potential experts about whom there are reservations and that judges appear to be inclined to accept them until you point out the body of material which suggests that they absolutely should not.
Expert witnesses must be neutral. That means anything which may prejudice their testimony or even appear to prejudice it such as agreeing to a prior chat with one of the parties must either be disclosed to a court or that expert must refuse to be instructed in the case. One expert witness that Charlie Thomas contacted made it clear in an email that should Charlie book an appointment with him that would preclude any possibility of that expert being instructed.
So, do regulated experts understand their responsibilities better than unregulated ones? As part of our investigation, we looked into some regulated experts who the family courts have relied on. One of them is Dr Jennifer Mathews. Hello, I'm Dr Mathews. Oh, hello. Excuse me, hello, Dr Mathews, how are you doing?
We understand Dr. Matthews is a registered forensic psychologist with more than two decades experience. She's regularly instructed as an expert witness in the family courts. We also understand that around the middle of last year, Dr. Matthews decided to stop working on parental alienation cases and began declining instructions as an expert witness from early October.
On the 15th of November, we understand she turned down one solicitor's invitation to be instructed in a parental alienation assessment. However, her website was still advertising her services as a parental alienation expert. And on that same day, she took a pre-arranged call from Charlie Thomas, our undercover dad, who had contacted her worried about not being able to see his children. Straight away, she strikes a professional note.
I don't know, are you sort of what the relationship with your ex-partner is like? It's not very good at the moment. It's not very good at the moment.
Yeah, yeah. And as I say, that's quite often the case, which is perhaps the reason why these things happened as well. So I don't know. I guess the only other thing that you could perhaps do is say that you're worried about what's happening. You're worried about not being able to spend time with the girls and you'd like to understand why that is.
see what sort of a response she gets about. I guess then you could show the court that you've tried to understand what's happening and is the latter resort because I understand that it is always a latter resort that you're going to the court. One of the reasons we decided to approach Dr. Matthews was because we came to know about a number of complaints made against her by mothers who have been in court over contact disputes about their children.
We know of five complaints which are currently being investigated by the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council. It is of course perfectly possible the HCPC will decide there is no case to answer on any or all of them and we understand that Jennifer Matthews's position is that the complaints stem from a campaign of abuse and trolling against her.
She's taken her website down now, but it used to say that her company was specialist in assessing parental alienation, assesses children, and makes recommendations about family time and safe reunification. It also stated, we formulate a treatment plan for each child depending on the results of a psychological assessment, and that treatment plans are formulated between Dr Matthews and the treating therapist.
Sessions are regularly supervised by Dr. Matthews. Her website said that, Dr. Matthews has devised interventions for families whether it's been parental alienation or severe parental conflict as a result of her assessment. Guidance published in 2022 by the Family Justice Council on conflicts of interest relating to expert witnesses in parental alienation cases,
says, the court should be extremely cautious when asked to consider assessment and treatment packages offered by the same or linked providers. Early on in the undercover call, which she does not charge for, she asks Charlie if there have been any allegations of domestic abuse. So towards the end of our marriage, I suspected she was having an affair and we had some very intense arguments and
There, I think she, anyway, so at the end of one of the particularly angry ones, we were both very angry, actually called the police. And I feel I'm worried that this, honestly, is going to be a problem for me. So she was quite rightly to ask about that.
Jamie Craig also observes that, in this conversation at least, Jennifer Matthews doesn't delve any further, or appear to consider any risk Charlie might pose to his ex or his children, which might be a justifiable reason for his older daughter not wanting to see him. Charlie asks her about parental alienation and she explains,
In terms of parental alienation, what we know is that sometimes for many, many, many different reasons, one parent can, in the end, influence children to not want to spend time with their other parents. To work out whether she thinks parental alienation is going on, Dr Matthew says,
We know that alienated children, they present very, very differently. Most children that I see, so I do a lot of work for the family courts, most children that I see, regardless of what their experiences within a family, tend to want to see, they want to see their parents, desperately want to see their parents, even if, and obviously this isn't the case here, but even if they've been abused by that parent, they still want to see the parent. The most strikingly different about an alienated child is that they don't want to see one parent,
And when you ask them why, they can't usually give you any good reason. Why not? So certainly not like a safeguarding reason or anything like that. So, so I forgive you an example. So I'll go and see a child and they'll say, you know, I don't want to, I don't see my dad. Okay. Can you tell me about why that is? And they'll say something like, well, he shouts and he's mean. And you're okay. And then, um,
that they're not real, they're not reasons for not wanting to see that, because they're with her and Charles. And when you drill that into what they mean, when they say mean, either that is, they can't tell you what that means, that it's just the word that they use. Or it will be something like, it makes me do my homework. And she insists again, later in the conversation, that
children who are alienated to present very, very differently to all of the children. Right. We ask Jamie Craig for his take on this. One of the big problems with the idea of a construct or a syndrome of alienation is that we don't have these really specific behaviours that show us that children are behaving
uniquely that proves therefore that they've been alienated. That's why it hasn't appeared in any diagnostic manuals. This may of course be simply a professional disagreement between two psychologists as to the way that genuinely alienated children present.
But Craig is all the same. Really troubled to hear almost a starting point being that we look to see whether there's alienation. We look to see whether my checklist is fulfilled. I can diagnose alienation. Almost the opposite way around the guidance. Charlie explains that he's worried his older daughter says she's scared of him.
So that was my concern is that that would be taken into account again. So I don't know what you think what's what's.
Again, that's a really common thing that a child who has been influenced would say, because what reason does she have to be frightened of you? That would be my question. Where has she got that from? Because you've told me very openly that there was a series of heat arguments, but arguments include two people, not just one, and on one occasion the police called, but that was
Over a year ago, and for the first year, she's happily saw you. So why does she now suddenly feel frightened of you? I suppose where somebody needs to ask those questions and to understand where this fear has come from or what she's calling fear. At one point, Charlie tells Dr Matthews that his next question.
This should be probably off the record, if you can do that. But Jamie doesn't think this is acceptable. But I think she should declare it if she's had a conversation with him.
Yeah, if she was then to be instructed. So I think it would have been fair to warn him that she can't really have a conversation with him off the record if she's ultimately going to be instructed as an expert. And she was happy it appeared not to inform the court of this conversation with Charlie. Should she ever come to be instructed?
And if you'd be able to speak to me again but if I had any questions, we'll be able to speak to your email you're what would be the way to see if there's a few if you if you email in the first instance so that we can just arrange to speak.
But I think if you know that you're likely at that point to be going to courts and you are thinking that you might like to put my CV forward, you can always, obviously we can provide that, then probably it would be best for us then not to speak after that because otherwise I would obviously have to disclose to the court if we were having ongoing discussions. She doesn't think she would have to disclose to the court that she's had this discussion.
And I don't understand the difference between this discussion and another discussion.
because he's already said that he thinks it's likely that they're going to court that there isn't a family support option. He isn't ringing her to say, can you help us as a family, me and my ex, why are you far looking for some help? She knows and he's been clear that that's where they're heading, that they're probably looking to instruct somebody or probably going to court. So I don't understand why she thinks there'll be a difference 10 minutes later or a few days later.
We understand that Dr. Matty's position is that the meeting with Charlie Thomas was atypical and took place because of her willingness to give him some advice over the custody of his children without any expectation of payment. We further understand that her position is that this was a free and informal conversation with Mr. Thomas, not a formal assessment.
Had she been doing this or interviewing Charlie Thomas in advance of proceedings, we understand that her approach would have been different. She believes it was reasonable for her to adopt the approach she took.
The family justice system is creaking at the seams. We're repeatedly told by insiders that it's under-resourced with not enough judges, not enough courts, not enough admin staff, and increasingly more and more people having to represent themselves in court without a lawyer because of cuts to legal aid. Court listings are packed and the delivery of justices we've personally observed under pressure.
Inevitably, therefore, this means that there may be little time for a judge to properly interrogate the credentials of experts put forward by battling litigants. So how should the courts test the qualifications and knowledge of expert witnesses whose ZVs are put forward?
I would almost always have a hearing because I want to be satisfied. The evidence does satisfy the necessary standards. Recently retired family high court judge, Sir Nicholas Mosden told us that he would hold hearings to interrogate the credentials of any expert witness who was proposed in a case.
The problem is that not all judges may be as rigorous as he was. So, if a court appointed expert is shown to be biased, or doesn't have the expertise demanded by the criteria set out in guidance, is there any recourse for a parent who's lost their children as a result of that expert's recommendations? Yeah, but they have to appeal and apply for a retailer. Could they do this even years after they'd lost their children?
I don't see if evidence is being given, which does not meet the criteria. I don't see why that would should mean... I mean, what is entitled to a fair trial? The name is that person hasn't had a fair trial. If the key evidence has been given in breach of these extremely important criteria, this being for myself, courts are there to administer justice and to rect finest characters of justice. That is what the function of the court is. That is what the rule of law requires, in my opinion.
However, the family court's focus in these proceedings must always be the child he observes. And heartbreakingly, this may preclude upsetting a long-settled home life to reunite a child with their mother, even if an unjust decision has been made to remove them. So courts have to be extremely careful. To remember, at the end of the day, it's the best interest of the child, which is the first empowerment consideration.
And as you say, things, things can have moved so far. Well, it's, uh, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er, er,
There's one voice in these stories that almost always gets missed out. The children at the heart of these custody battles. One such girl who was abruptly removed from her mother after a quarter-pointed expert got involved was Florence. We are using her real voice, but not her name. Five years earlier, a family court judge had made a finding of domestic abuse against Florence's father.
But despite this, the expert witness who gave evidence, neither of the two we've heard from, said that problems with Florence's contact with him were caused by her mother's distress and unresolved angry feelings about the breakdown of the relationship, which she had communicated to Florence.
The judge ordered that Florence, against her will, should be moved. Florence, who was so determined to return to her mother that she fought to be allowed to instruct her own solicitor, took her case back to court when she was almost 16. It was not made easy for her.
Now 18, and because there's a published judgement, legally able to speak out about the impact of what she was put through, Florence's words are a reminder of what can happen when the family courts don't properly interrogate the basis of expert theories or deliver a robust, consistent justice.
I found diary entries which start from August 2016, just after I was removed from my mother's care and I was 10. Here are some of the sections which struck me. August 16, 2016, age 10. What am I supposed to do? Hardly anyone believes that I want to live with my mom, but that's what I want more than anything in the world. August 17, 2016, age 10.
I don't know what to do anymore. After I got up, I was just standing there and thinking that I wanted something very badly, my mum. Most of the people who believe my mum and I are the people who can't do anything to help.
January 16, 2017, age 10. I just want to go home and be with my mum. Nobody understands. I feel like someone has just died when I'm having to say goodbye to my mum. My life is about to get completely ruined in a few days and I can hardly do anything to stop it. February 26, 2017, age 10.
Apparently my dad has full custody of me. I don't know what to do. How can he have full custody? I do not understand it. I'm going to try and call the NSPCC. March 1st 2017, age 10.
Why do people stop you from seeing the person who you should be living with? I think that this world has gone mad. Why would you take a mother's child away from them when they are a perfectly wonderful mother? I just want to go home. I don't know how much longer I can put up with this constant anxiety. But am I making this all up? Am I being melodramatic?
Whenever I experience joy, it is always dampened by what is happening. I'm not being believed by the tell the truth. I want to be heard, but the world doesn't care. I need it to stop. Please.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Slow Newscast by Tortoise. This story was reported by me, Luis Tickle and Hannah Summers from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, with further reporting by Paul Bradshaw, Serena Cesaro, William Jarrett and Tom Wall. The producer was Matt Russell, sound design by Dominic Dallagi and artwork by Lola Williams. The editor was Jasper Corbett. The show's executive producer is Matt Russell.
Tortoise. I'm Natalia Malman-Petrizala and from the BBC this is extreme. Peak danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain.
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