Family courts in England & Wales are now OPEN to journalists and legal bloggers!  We have campaigned for this since March 2017 when we started protesting outside the Central Family Court in London, calling for the courts to be open. It’s a massive victory for the movement of mothers challenging sexism, racism, disability discrimination & class bias in family courts. It’s been a big help that several journalists, in particular Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers, have repeatedly pursued their right to report on family court cases up to the High Court.

Opening the family courts to public scrutiny must help stop the brutal and barbaric judgements we have seen recently – like the 20% increase in newborn babies being taken from terrified mothers. Most of these mothers are being targeted not because they are unloving or violent but because they are single, young, were themselves in “care” as children, have had children removed before, are poor and/or homeless, have suffered domestic violence, are women of colour and/or immigrant, and/or have a disability. Poverty is not neglect by mothers but by the state. Mothers and children are legally entitled to financial and other support to stay together – this must become a statutory obligation.

Opening the family courts must also help to stop court orders that force children to live with violent fathers who torture and kill them. It will help expose and hopefully lead to the abolition of sexist laws like “presumption of contact” which prioritise fathers’ “rights” over children and women’s safety.

This news comes as the main family court judge who sent Sara Sharif to live with the father and step-mother who murdered her, has also been named – another victory for open justice. Judge Alison Raeside ruled it was “safe” for Sara to live with her father, despite his 16-year history of domestic violence against Sara’s mother, two other partners and his two children. Judge Raeside’s final comment was “I am going to hope for the best’”. It’s outrageous that judgements on the lives of vulnerable young children are made “hoping for the best”, when the worst is already known! The family courts are obsessed with fathers’ “right” to their children. Sara’s mother was considered a risk, not her father.  Yet it is overwhelmingly men who beat, rape and kill children, and mothers who try to protect them.

This is not the first time that women judges have ruled with violent fathers against mothers who were themselves victims of violence – they join a long line of male judges who do the same. All sexist judges must be sacked, regardless of gender. They are a danger to children and women.

The outrageous anti-mother bias in family courts is also exposed by Tortoise Media and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. They show how so-called “parental alienation” experts, Melanie Gill and Karen Woodall among others, have built an industry accusing mothers of “alienating” children from fathers who the children don’t want to see. Their recommendations, often accepted by judges, have led to children going into foster care or being removed immediately from mothers and forced to live with the father, denied all contact with their mothers. These unregulated “experts” are embedded in family courts together with fathers’ groups who deny domestic violence, and in CAFCASS, befriended by President McFarlane in a toxic combination which has resulted in hundreds if not thousands of devastating long-term separations of children from their mothers.

Wrenching babies and children from their mothers causes lifelong trauma to children and is a major cause of suicide among mothers. Our children do not belong to the state – they belong with their mothers. This vital bond must be supported. The opening of the family courts will strengthen mothers’ struggle to protect our children.

Anne Neale from Support Not Separation says:

“Caring mothers, rebellious children and determined campaigners have won the opening of the family courts after decades of secret rulings. Public scrutiny will strengthen all mothers struggling to protect their children from violent fathers and from the controlling state which feeds a private child removal industry that profits from our pain. The genie is out of the bottle, and it’s not going back! “