Family Courts can seriously damage your health
A new study by Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno and others has highlighted serious physical and mental harms reported by mothers.
Importantly, in England, children were forced into contact with fathers in 43/45 cases, even where fathers were convicted child sex offenders. Mother’s medical notes were accessed by the courts without their consent and used to mock them. So-called ‘parental alienation’ was used to deny the abuse of children and mothers. The government have three times now rejected so-called parental alienation, yet our family courts persist in using this framework, which has been denounced by global institutions and actors such as the United Nations, SRVAWG, and the World Health Organisation. Health experiences reported span miscarriage through to cancer and suicide, which mothers report as trauma responses to family court.
These findings have global significance for services and practitioners who work with mothers exposed to family court.
