The scandal of family courts laid bare

How can a court concerned with child welfare order the removal at dead of night of youngsters from the safe home where they are sleeping to the home of a parent they don’t want to live with? That’s what we saw this week in an upsetting documentary on Channel 4 about the secretive family courts.

Hundreds of disputes are heard by these courts and it is illegal to report on them, supposedly to protect children’s privacy. But the reporter Louise Tickle uncovered many stories that made no sense. How, for instance, was a convicted paedophile allowed to return to a family court 37 times to fight for equal access to his young children?

In 2017, Cafcass and women’s Aid found that 62 per cent of the cases before these courts contained allegations of domestic abuse. A woman who claims her partner is violent is often accused by him of turning the children against him.

The court tries to give kids a relationship with both parents. But what child wants to live with a violent parent, male or female?

A retired family court judge, Sir James Munby, acknowledged that many judges and magistrates have a poor understanding of rape, domestic abuse and coercive control. All, he said, should have training — a requirement for which was included in recent legislation but removed by the Government for fear of interfering with the judiciary’s independence.

It must be reinstated. Some lawyers claim the courts’ secrecy is enabling abusers. Sir James Munby believes they need to be opened — and he is right.