Two girls who were forced to live with their abusive father after being removed from their mother’s care escaped in the middle of the night by smashing and jumping through a first-floor window, it has emerged.
Their case highlights a growing concern around unregulated experts appointed by family courts ordering the removal of children from parents without proper provision.
In this shocking case, a family court ordered the girls aged 11 and 13 to stop contact with their mother and live with their father for 90 days, despite accusations that he was a domestic abuser.
One of the girls called a mental health emergency services number from her father’s bedroom, warning she would take her own life if she could not return home to her mother.
The case has been explored in new research by University College London (UCL), which reports that unregulated experts appointed by the family courts in England and Wales have harmed children by taking them away from their mothers, and making them either live with or have contact with fathers accused of domestic violence.
The vulnerable girls, who accused their father of coercive control and physical and sexual abuse, had been forced to live with him under a “reunification” plan put forward by an unregulated expert and independent social worker – with both parties temporarily living with them to encourage their reunion.
But the sisters fled from their father after five days of the so-called “reunification” plan – smashing through a window before being taken into police custody after they were discovered by roadside workers in the early hours of the morning.
After spending time in foster care, the older daughter was allowed to go back to her mother but only after a lengthy period of experiencing suicidal thoughts and self-harm. The younger daughter was permitted to live with the parents of her mother’s new partner as she also refused to stay with her father.
In the final High Court judgment, the judge hit out at the term “parental alienation” and argued it had been “thoroughly unhelpful, by embedding conflict” and the notion one parent was in the right and the other was in the wrong. The judge warned “somewhere in the history of this case we have lost our humanity”.
The study comes as The Independent continues its Brick by Brick campaign, in partnership with the leading domestic abuse charity Refuge, to raise funds to build two houses for women escaping abusive partners. The initial £300,000 target was exceeded thanks to generous donations from readers, with more than £500,000 in donations pouring in so far and plans already underway for a second home.
The latest research, published in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, looks at three cases where children aged between nine and 17 were forcibly removed from their mothers and made to live with their fathers despite domestic abuse allegations and court findings of abuse.
Researchers said the family court orders followed the recommendations of unregulated experts who accused mothers of perpetrating parental alienation.
Dr Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, a report author based at UCL, said: “In these shocking cases, the children expressed clear wishes to stay with their mother but were ignored.
“Once they had been labelled as ‘alienated’, they ended up legally entrapped with their voices silenced and thereby unable to influence proceedings determining their lives.
“These cases show the harm of the ‘alienation’ belief system, which has become a legal weapon that serves to punish and control those who speak up about their lived abuse experiences. They also show the potential harm of the family court-appointed ‘experts’, unregulated as well as regulated, who claim to be trained and able to identify so-called alienation.”
The courts “went to brutal lengths to reconcile children with their fathers despite the children’s feelings and fears related to living with them”, she warned.
