Are family law courts ruling against abused mothers?

political analyst

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2023/05/23/td-calls-for-inquiry-into-use-of-parental-alienation-in-family-law-cases/

The TD Bernard Durkan is calling for an inquiry into cases in which mothers who say they were abused by their former partners have been accused of 'parental alienation' - a concept he describes as a "pseudo condition without scientific basis".

A recommendation that the concept be banned in family law courts will come before the UN human rights committee in Geneva next month. Proponents of the concept, however, say its impact can be worse than sexual abuse and argue it should be defined and legislated for as a form of child abuse. The Department of Justice is preparing to publish two reports it commissioned on the use of parental alienation in family law cases.

Why would family law court judges automatically dismiss a claim that is made by a mother that she has been abused by her ex-partner?

Even if there has been a police investigation into the alleged abuse and it has been decided not to prosecute due to insufficient evidence, does it not occur to those judges that there is still a significant likelihood of the accusation of abuse being true? By the way, that question is also applicable in other common-law jurisdictions.

Does it not occur to these judges that any allegedly abusive ex-partner to whom they award custody of the children that man (most domestic abusers are men) had with the alleged victim (most victims of violence in sexual relationships are women) could be the next Sanjeev Chada or Alan Hawe?

political analyst

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66534732

Some women have taken their children and gone to the breakaway republic in northern Cyprus because, according to those women, UK family-law courts ruled that the fathers of the children are entitled to have access to the children even though the fathers have been abusive to the mothers.

Here's an example of such a case from the page that I've linked in this specific post.

'The father brought a case in the family court accusing her of frustrating contact with their daughter. Rose says the court didn't take seriously or investigate her safety concerns. Rose says her child refused to see her father, which she believes was seen by the court as evidence of parental alienation - and led to the court ordering her daughter to live with the father.

Parental alienation is a disputed concept of children rejecting one parent because of manipulation by the other.

"It nearly destroyed me. The handover was horrific, my child was screaming, kicking - 'Don't make me go, Mummy' - grabbing me."

Away from court, Rose had been referred to Victim Support and her child's school had raised concerns. "But the court wanted contact [with the father] at all costs. I was protecting my child," she says.'

Even if the father hasn't been convicted of a crime, there may still be evidence to indicate on the balance of probabilities that the father has been abusive to the mother. If he has been abusive to her, then it stands to reason that he poses a threat to the children's well-being.

Besides, why would a judge force children who don't want to be with their father to be in their father's custody? Even if 'parental alienation' has actually happened in a child-custody case between a mother and a father, it has to be better to let the children stay with a mother who loves them, even if the accusations that she made against the children's father are not true.

There's so many layers of abject ignorance in your post, just as there is in the comments of the Fine Gael TD for Kildare North, Bernard Durkan, that it's really hard to know where to start if we surmise you're not trying to troll.

Both of you couldn't be further from the reality of what's going on in family law courts. I hope male voters in Kildare North going through marital breakdown (or seeking the courage to finally stand up to their wife and end things) - and the daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, female friends and girlfriends behind them - are taking note of what Bernard Durkan said about fathers' rights to parent, a number of times.

For clarity: Bernard Durkan, FG TD, Dáil Éireann (19 April 2023): "The nature and scale of the allegations brought to my attention are such that they have urged me to hurry and be more insistent in trying to achieve what women think should be their rights. I said "think should be their rights", for obvious reasons, but these are women's rights and they have an entitlement to their full rights without restriction. Nobody has the right to say to a mother of children that her rights are limited and will be subject to the views of the other side. There is an urgent need here for change and it should come sooner rather than later." (https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2023-04-19a.237). So, yes Fine Gael's Bernard Durkan is saying women have a superior right to children over the children's fathers. No matter how abusive, controlling and mentally unwell she is - she should control the children. This was said in 2023 by a FG member of Dáil Éireann! Is this incredible sexism Fine Gael party policy? We should be told. At the very least, the 10,258 voters in Kildare North who voted for Bernard Durkan in the 2020 election might want to ask themselves do they believe that a mother should have superior rights to parent children than a father has? Oh, and if Durkan's idea of the equality agenda is to deny fathers equal parenting rights (and removal from the family home and homelessness based on gender grounds), can we similarly exclude all women from the top political and corporate jobs? If not, why not? What's sauce for the goose...

Now, to the substantive point. As Irish family law judgements are notoriously secretive due to the travesty that is the 'in camera' rule, we don't actually have statistics on what's happening in the family law courts. The nearest we have is Róisín OShea's four-year PhD (2014: https://repository.wit.ie/2825/1/thesis_ROS_WITLIB_201405final.pdf) on what's happening. Carol Coulter has done a smaller (October 2006) sample study, and the Law Society issued a report in April 2019 about family law reform, citing certain important judgments (https://www.lawsociety.ie/globalassets/documents/submissions/divorce-in-ireland-april-2019.pdf). We have zero statistics on what is happening in family law cases overall. Successive Irish governments have been asked to fund a research unit, but they refuse and thus the egregious injustices which the family law system perpetrates continue unabated in Ireland in 2023, without any light on them or investigation into them. Anybody who believes in Ireland being a democracy should be very concerned about the secrecy of judgments, the secrecy about waiting times and the immense suffering which the elongated, financially crushing family law system inflicts on many tens of thousands of Irish people and their families each year. It really is an abberation funded by the 23% VAT paid by all its victims - a 'misery tax' collected by each Irish government.

However, anecdotally the picture is very, very clear and consistent: it is women who are, in fact, alienating children from their fathers every day of the week. It is women who are overwhelmingly the ones denying access to good fathers to their own children. Not a single woman has ever been imprisoned for this, although very many have been threatened with imprisonment by judges. You can't imprison a mother, is the prejudice so the system is played by these people, and the judges haven't the balls to, rather than send them to prison, give full parenting rights to the fathers. That would be a revolution in Irish family law courts. Mothers are treated like a protected species in Irish family law courts, in a hallowed position and perpetrating all the abuses which hallowed positions perpetrate. And fathers are the victims.

Should you ever have the misfortune to need Men's Aid support, you will meet many, many other men across Ireland who have had false allegations laid against them in order to remove them from the family home and initiate a criminal case. While the criminal case takes years to get to court, the father remains removed from the family home and the mother controls the children's access via a series of many other lies and threats against the kids - 'If you go with your father this weekend, you won't get x', etc, etc. This, women playing the victim card and alienating the children from their father, is common as mud. That is the reality that you and Bernard Durkan deny. It is prejudice and bigotry of the worst sort to go around with a mentality which assumes there are not evil, nasty, malignant, malicious and profoundly controlling women in many, many marriages. The sort who firmly believe that the children are their personal chattels and no father has equal rights to them. These women are a protected species in the family law courts of Ireland in 2023 - and the 'in camera' rule protects their abuses at every stage. Even if they are found to have made false allegations, they will never be publicly named due to the 'in camera' rule despite destroying the father's life for many years. This is 'evil' in its truest meaning to lay false allegations of abuse against a father. False allegations are a very low risk strategy for women, and a very high reward strategy (control of the children and family home, and impoverishment of the children's father) - which, of course, explains why false allegations abound in family law cases. Apologists for this system blame the people involved when, in truth, the family law system in its secrecy and enormous waiting lists is 100% responsible for all these abuses being allowed to continue for years of legal processes - with the bully almost always never having to pay the costs of the victim. What's going on in family law courts in Ireland in 2023 is as much an outrage as what was happening in the industrial schools and Magdalene laundries - except now, the victims are overwhelming poor men. Overwhelmingly. There is great, great inhumanity perpetrated by the Irish State in its maintenance of the current, egregiously secretive, statistically-bare, family law system and its profoundly inhumane delays. There is no scapegoating divorcing people for a legal system which facilitates infinitely greater abuse and is rooted in gender bias. It should be crushing the divorcing people who are deliberately dragging things out for years, making false allegations against fathers and alienating their children from their fathers. Stop putting one gender on a pedestal in the family courts - especially when you're demanding equal rights for them in traditional male-dominated societal roles. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121078720#Comment_121078720

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-68732503

The chief justice of Northern Ireland is open to the possibility of reform of family law courts.

Why are mothers of children who are abused by their fathers being accused of 'parental alienation' by family court judges?

Even if a mother is 'alienating' her child from the father, it's still better to leave the child with the mother because taking the child to the father against the child's will causes greater harm.

Claw Hammer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121979394#Comment_121979394

I separation situations the parent with custody often messes the other parent around with regard to access visits etc. False allegations of abuse are often made to assist in this process. The courts take the view that there needs to be a compelling reason to deny a parent access to their child. For a bitter ex, that is often a problem, hence all the whinging.

Mrs OBumble

So it's OK to leave some children in abusive situations, so that some other innocent fathers don't lose their rights without reason.

Children First, my ar$e.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121980018#Comment_121980018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_alienation_syndrome

'Parental alienation syndrome' is a term that was created by child psychiatrist Richard Gardner, who stabbed himself to death in 2003 as the FBI suspected him of child sexual abuse.

Surely, that means that family law court judges should not be taking this alleged alienation seriously. Even if a mother is alienating her child against the father, it might be best to still leave the child with the mother if the mother loves the child because taking the child to the father against the child's will may cause the child even greater harm.

Claw Hammer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121982206#Comment_121982206

It is more about access than custody.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121992632#Comment_121992632

If the father has intentionally caused harm to the mother - whether physical or by coercive control - why would judges and social workers think he wouldn't do the same to the children?

combat14

so many men are treated like absolute dirt by the so called family law courts in this country

justice delayed is justice denied

imagine not hearing from or seeing your child for months on end all because of a bitter twisted ex making up spurious lies

the judge may threaten jail or fines to the mother but nothing is ever done

many men cant afford proper legal representation and give up all hope in absolute despair of ever seeing or having a meaningful relationship with their kids while being labelled the disgusting term "dead beat dads"

the process to get justice in many cases takes years and years at that stage the children are damaged and destroyed by the alienating parent

most people outside this "system" dont have any clue

combat14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121982206#Comment_121982206

"even if a mother is alienating HER child against the father..... "

i think that says it all

alienating one parent against the other is a form of child abuse and completely unacceptable .. the damage to kids and entire extended families is incalculable

https://extra.ie/2024/06/17/news/irish-news/helen-mcentee-parental-law

The controversial concept of parental alienation will no longer be allowed to influence family law proceedings under new reforms, the Dáil has heard.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee this week signalled significant changes to family law proceedings when she said parental alienation ‘cannot be part of any decisions that are taken in a private court’.

Say what you like about McEntee but she's done an incredible amount of work in bringing about greater acess to justice for abused women

monkeybutter

This seems to be a case off too much twitter or facebuke on the tds part

Because saying that 100s lf women are losing access to their kids for any reason is an outright lie and why this td hasnt been questioned on this says it all

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122280067#Comment_122280067

Loosing access based on reports by unregulated authors, like Jim Sheehan.

monkeybutter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122280115#Comment_122280115

No one has any stats to go on, im sure if there were it would raise a few eyebrows and show how biased the system is, understandly at times

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122280130#Comment_122280130

The concept of parental alienation was described as 'unfounded and unscientific' by the UN. Child welfare reports are already regarded on a case by case basis in family law courts.

One of the key recommendations is that, when a report is ordered in the family courts, a panel of assessors will examine the ‘reason for the report in particular that there are correct qualifications for those who are carrying out these reports’, the Dáil heard.