A recent study involving 45 women who had accused their partners of domestic abuse has drawn attention to the severe health issues they claim to have experienced as a result of what they perceive as biased family court proceedings.
While the study is qualitative and relies on self-reported data, rendering it non-generalizable to the broader population, the experiences recounted by these women underscore the need for further investigation.
Conducted by researchers from a prominent university in collaboration with members of the SHERA Research Group and The Survivor Family Network, this study was funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). It focused on the experiences of the women and their 77 children and is set to be published in the coming weeks.
According to the women interviewed in this study, they attributed a range of psychological conditions, including suicidal thoughts, memory loss, depression, and flashbacks, to the emotional toll of their court experiences. They also claimed that physical ailments such as Crohn’s Disease, cancer, psoriasis, heart palpitations, and miscarriages were either exacerbated by or directly linked to their involvement in court proceedings.
Several respondents shared heart-wrenching stories, including one woman who described her mother suffering a heart attack during court proceedings and another who lost her father to a heart attack while legal matters were ongoing. In another tragic account, a respondent reported that an acquaintance had taken her own life during court proceedings involving allegations of so-called “parental alienation.”
The researchers noted that 39 of the women who had accused their former partners of abuse were subsequently counter-accused using a controversial legal argument known as parental alienation (PA). The research team argues that PA was employed as a means to negate abuse allegations and to grant access, or even custody, of their children to the accused abusive parents.
The remaining six women, who were not accused of PA themselves, claimed they were either threatened with PA or unfairly characterized as medically or psychologically abnormal.
Parental alienation (PA) refers to a belief system that is universally rejected by governments, the World Health Organization, and mainstream organizations. It purportedly involves psychological manipulation of a child to turn them against one of their parents. However, research indicates that false allegations of PA are rare and that inducing a child to make false accusations of child sexual abuse is extremely challenging.
Lead researcher Dr. Elizabeth Dalgarno asserts that the courts, despite the vulnerability of women who have suffered abuse, tend to favor male perpetrators by accepting PA as a valid argument.
Dr. Dalgarno suggests that this court bias may stem from a lack of training for judges and court professionals regarding coercive control and domestic abuse. Additionally, it may be rooted in a broader culture of misogyny and victim-blaming prevalent in society.
A recent government inquiry also revealed that family courts often fail to believe children when they report abuse.
Dr. Dalgarno further points out that the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) appears to accept PA and may have a perceived proximity to the father’s rights lobby.
Dr. Dalgarno, a lecturer in public health and the Founder and Chair of SHERA Research Group, commented, “This study is the first to establish a connection between family court proceedings and issues like suicidal thoughts, suicides, and mental and physical health problems in women who have experienced domestic abuse.”
She continues, “We propose that these conditions should be examined at a broader scale in clinical research, under the umbrella term we’ve coined as ‘Court and Perpetrator Induced Trauma’ (CPIT). The women we interviewed provide a vivid illustration of the toll that parental alienation allegations, a pseudoscientific belief system designed to control women and deny abuse, can have on their psychological and physical well-being.”
Dr. Dalgarno concludes, “Most abusers are not convicted, and most women do not report to the police. This study is an important step in highlighting this issue. While we cannot extrapolate broadly from this qualitative study, the findings underscore the structural disadvantage and inherent societal misogyny faced by women, offering insights that may be applicable to a wider population of mothers. The system appears to be stacked against abused women, with courts often displaying insufficient empathy. It is essential to address these concerns urgently, especially considering that approximately 49% to 62% of the 55,000 private family court cases each year involve domestic abuse. This raises questions about whether these alarming health impacts constitute a public health emergency, necessitating further research.”
The dysfunction within family court proceedings was previously highlighted in the 2020 Harm Report by the Ministry of Justice, which acknowledged that PA is used by abusive fathers to deny allegations of abuse, even though Home Office figures show that only 2-5% of domestic abuse claims are false.
