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[See Ill Eagle 20, p7, for Guardian 29nov01
article discussing Cheri Booths speech at this conference. Also, see www.ivorcatt.com/2201.htm ] Mullender Regents Park Conference Nov 2001 The Effects of Domestic Violence
on Children Professor Audrey Mullender. She is Professor of Social Work at the University
of Warwick where she chairs the School of Health and Social Studies and
directs the Centre for the Study of Safety and Wellbeing, marvellously known
as SWELL. She has over twenty years experience of teaching social work and
before that was involved in social services. She is the immediate past editor
of the British Journal of Social Work and has published well over a hundred
publications in the social work field, including more than a dozen books,
particularly relevant to this conference, `Children Living With Domestic
Violence', `Putting Men's Abuse of Women on the Child Care Agenda' and
`Rethinking Domestic Violence for Social Work and Probation Response'. As we are here to talk about children this morning
it seems appropriate to begin with the words of a child, rather distressing
words, but shared with a worker in a refuge. This child was saved because he
and his mother and the other children had escaped to this refuge. He was six
at the time, a little Asian boy. "He says he loves my Mum but he lies, he
tells Mum to do everything at home. He never gave Mum any money. He hit my
Mum, I saw it. I tried to look happy but I wasn't inside. He never played
with me, I felt lonely, I feel sad for my Dad, he is an idiot. I don't like
my Dad. My Dad hit my sister with a plate and she started bleeding on her
head, she was red everywhere. I feel happy now because I am away from my Dad.
He can't find us now because he doesn't know the way. My Dad really wants to
kill us and shoot us. He will lock us in a room and we will never get out and
have nothing to eat. I must look after my Mum, my Dad is really bad. When I
am big I could be Batman and go and kill my Dad and throw him in a dustbin. I
like the refuge because if the children do something wrong you see the
workers and then it is alright but I am scared when I have to see my Dad
sometimes that he will hurt me and shoot me. He said lots of times that he
would do that to all of us." That is a moving and distressing account but also
a very rich one that shows us that children do have their own perceptions and
understandings of what is going on when they live with domestic violence. It
shows us very graphically that, as Cherie Booth has already said, the danger
doesn't end when the relationship does, because this child is experiencing
contact and is frightened by it. It is an account too, that shows us that
children are social actors in their lives, as the sociologists would have it,
that they think about things, that they want to take action and sometimes of
course that can be dangerous. It is about listening to children and
understanding things from their perspective. I am going to talk about what we understand by
domestic violence, what impact it has on children and how they understand it.
I am going to use the words of children, drawings by children and drawings
that are used with children to illustrate the talk. When we think about a definition of domestic
violence we think of a whole range of things and the most obvious is the
physical violence. We have a very graphic drawing by a child of violence by
his father towards his mother. In the course of a number of research studies
we have collected a wide range of quotes from children about what they have
actually witnessed, and have observed, because children very often are in the
home when the violence is going on, even when their parents don't think they
are seeing it or don't think they are hearing it. The children are lying
awake in bed upstairs or they are in the next room, and it often comes out in
research when you talk to children. It is interesting, if their mother is present when
you are talking to them, that they will describe incidents that the mother
has no idea they knew about. The children do know a lot of what is going on.
A thirteen year old girl said to a researcher, "I have seen him kick and punch and pull her
hair. Once he threw petrol over her. I remember him cutting my Mum's
lips", and a sixteen year old, "There have been lots of occasions when I
have sat there and watched my Dad hurt my Mum. I have seen him strangle her,
punch her and generally hurt her." Of course once the violence has begun it does not
have to be constantly repeated, though often it is a very much repeated
pattern, but it does not have to be daily for the threat and the fear to be
there. There is an atmosphere that builds up in the home that children are
very frightened about. When that thirteen year old said, "I felt scared
and worried, he said he was going to kill our Mum" and the other child
who said, " I thought he was going to shoot me. He said lots of times
that he would do that to all of us" then those threats, that
intimidation, that atmosphere form part of the wider picture. I remember a woman telling me that it got to the
point where her husband only had to look at her and she knew that the threat
of violence was there but, of course, you cannot very well go to the police
and say, "He looked at me". For us, when we are trying to
understand this pattern of domestic violence we do have to understand those
other elements within it. We use pictures to work with children. They
explain physical abuse to children, and then they explain emotional abuse as
another part of that pattern. There is some very good intervention work now,
still patchy in Britain, though brilliant where it is happening, when talking
to children who have lived with domestic violence. It is rather more
widespread in North America. I find this fascinating, a way of talking, even
to very young children, some as young as four and five years old and using
these terms of `outside' hurting and `inside' hurting, so that it is possible
to talk through with them what they have lived with. Another child's drawing
shows some of this happening: it shows both the physical threat that is going
on, there is a knife in the drawing, but also the verbal abuse. Part of the emotional abuse is denigration of
women, constant putting-down, telling them that they are bad mothers, that
they are no good, killing women's self esteem as much as threatening their
physical life. Another account from a twelve year old girl, "He was just hitting her with his hands and
shouting and swearing at her, saying that she is horrible, she is wicked, she
is not a very good Mummy. Just saying all horrible things to her and really
hurting her, making her cry and Mum couldn't do anything. I just called the
police". There was another example of a child wanting to
get involved, wanting to do something and actually succeeding in calling the
police on that occasion. [page 6 ] One thing that is much more difficult for children
to talk about, though it is raised in groups with them, is another element of
domestic violence, and that is sexual abuse and marital rape. A Canadian
group attempts to raise this with children. You will see the obvious link
there, not only with bringing together the inside and outside hurting but
also the private parts of the body that are talked about in prevention of
child sexual abuse and talking to children about that. Although it is
difficult to raise that awful and very frightening subject with children we
know that children are often present when there is sexual abuse of their
mothers. One in ten of the mothers in the National Children's
Homes `Action for Children Survey', published in 1994, said that their
children had been present when they had been sexually abused or raped. In the
most recent research I have been involved in with colleagues from Bristol,
North London and Durham, a woman talked to us about having been raped with a
seven year old daughter in bed with her at the time. It did not come out in
the child's interview with us, but that may have been because she did not
know what was happening or had blocked it out, or did not want to talk about
it. We need to understand that, not only is this very
alarming, it is also very frightening for children. Interestingly, they did
not just talk about fear but they also talked about being made very sad. One
child said she had been miserable while all this was going on, and a few
talked about being angry and lots of other mixtures of feelings towards their
parents, and towards agencies for not helping them more effectively. I also want to draw out this pattern of domestic
violence in terms of a power and control wheel, that many of us who work in
the field are most familiar with, and which came from the work in Deluth in
America. The wheel with power and control at the centre of it, is kept in
place by the physical violence and the threat of it and with all the portions
between the spokes of the wheel being the many forms that violence can take.
Often in work with survivors of violence, including children, and also with
perpetrators of violence, groups do their own version of this wheel and the
members of the group think about what forms the violence has taken for them
in order to make sense of it and this can produce some very valuable work
with children. Children understand if you talk to them and the
most recent research has heard children's voices directly. They understand
about this pattern and they understand that it escalates over time and it
gets more and more frightening. One child said that her awareness had grown
between the ages of about eleven and thirteen, "He used to take his shoes and beat my Mum
but when he did that we always used to go to our rooms and lock ourselves in
because it was just one of those things that happened with women and men but
it got much worse. It just got more vicious and I think it is really life
threatening now, that he is really serious and means to do real harm to us. I
just thought before that it was that he really hated my mum, that they didn't
get along but now it is just so much worse." I think what she is talking about there is this
power and control building up and is the escalation of that pattern of
domestic violence over time. One added problem for us as professionals is that
if a woman or a child comes to us for help we do not know what stage in that
pattern they have reached. So we need always to take what they say seriously,
always to regard it as life threatening, always to regard confidentiality as
a prime concern. We always need to be very clear in our analysis, very clear
in our interviewing or in our discussions with people we are trying to help
as to what [Page 7], exactly was going on, particularly who was doing what to
whom. I was trained in an area when systems theory was very much in fashion
and there was talk of dangerous families and dangerous couples and so on and
family conflict and family violence, which isn't a great deal of help if you
are trying to look at who is actually presenting the danger and who is
actually at risk. I now work unashamedly from a
feminist perspective, valuing diversity and difference within
that and recognising that domestic violence is widespread, across all
classes, all ethnic groups and in all parts of the world. It also
acknowledges that, statistically, by far the greatest danger is posed by men
against women, that there are almost two women a week killed in England and
Wales still, despite us taking domestic violence much more seriously in
recent years, and that often when women are being violent towards men or when
there is a killing of a man, it is a woman acting in self defence. Now I am not here as an apologist for all women. I
know that we can be nasty and vicious and horrid, and I do my bit, but I am
talking about life threatening danger. I am talking about a pattern as I have
said, of violence and abuse that builds up over time and I am talking about
that within a social, historical and cultural context where, until very
recently, violence and abuse was tolerated, indeed, sometimes expected, to
keep women in line. It is still sometimes the butt of jokes; it still crops
up in the media, in television programmes without always being seen as
absolutely intolerable and it is only very recently that agencies have come
together to work on it and try to move on. It is very recent, really only a
decade, that we have been talking about domestic violence as a crime on a par
with other forms of violence. We still have a long way to go but I think we
can congratulate ourselves on progress. We have begun to recognise the
issues, including for children, but we do have a long way to go still. Having said all of that about what is happening,
what can we say about what impact it has on children when they live with this
phenomenon? There is not one syndrome, there is not one pattern that is
happening to children that we could just look at and say, "Ah, yes, that's
a child who is living with domestic violence." There are as many ways of
children reacting almost as there are children: we know that children show
their distress in a lot of different ways. We know, for example, that it
would depend on their age. The little ones cannot necessarily talk about what
has happened so it might come out in physical symptoms, it might be wetting
the bed, it might be sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances, of course, are
very common because often they are lying and hearing things happening in the
night and perhaps are frightened to go back to sleep. From our most recent research, speech disturbances
seem very common. These and other developmental delays, behavioural and
physical, show us that children are trying to tell us that something is
wrong. For professionals, it means we need to be looking out for these
possible underlying reasons. A child might present with something that looks
just like a physical illness but is actually a psychological problem
requiring a whole range of child care and child health professionals. If we
are not asking the right questions, if we do not know the routine way of
finding out what is happening at home we are going to miss it. Domestic violence is, as we have said, very very
widespread, so we need to be asking those questions all the time, but within
that we need to remember the previous point I made about [ page 8]. confidentiality. We have to find very safe ways of
asking questions that do not inadvertently make the danger worse. Older children, the sort of middle years of
childhood, can get very clingy with their mothers, others become aggressive.
It used to be thought in earlier research, that was gendered, but I think
from looking more closely and from recent research that that is probably not
the case. I think again it depends on the particular child and how they are
going to react. Indeed you can get children in the same family, sometimes of
the same gender, reacting very differently to precisely the same events,
depending on who they are, or reacting differently over time. One seventeen
year old girl whom I interviewed said at first, when she was much younger she
was clingy. "I wouldn't leave my mum, I wouldn't leave
her anywhere. I was around her all the time and then when I was about fourteen
I used to stay out all the time. I would end up just staying away altogether.
I would stay at my real dad's, my sister's, my boyfriend's, anywhere, just to
get out of the house and that was all I was interested in, staying out of the
house." It would not be surprising, though not inevitable,
if she ended up with some other kinds of problems and perhaps was coming
through to youth based services, and are we then asking the right questions
to find out what has gone on? Individual children in the same family may react
differently. One woman I interviewed talked to me about her three sons. The
eldest one, when he was big enough, tried to fight his dad and get him away
from his mother. The youngest one also tried to be active and would run to
the door and try and call for help. Remembering Cherie Booth's comment
earlier on, this was a very middle class area, and this was a very proper
family. Not at all the stereotypical kind of family and, in fact, help did
not come to the door. The middle boy, growing up through his teen-age years
did not have that kind of personality. He could not react in those ways and
felt dreadful because both his brothers, even the youngest one, would try to
do something active and he just could not. He became more and more reclusive
and stayed in his room and had to have his meals sneaked in to him by his
mother. In the end he developed some quite severe mental health problems and
had suicidal feelings for a while. I am pleased to say that he did get
effective help and was able to move on from that, but you can see three very
different reactions there to the same events. It is about us knowing the
child, listening to the child and finding out what is happening for them and
not having stereotypical assumptions. The Canadian study that is often quoted showed 2.5
times the rate of behaviour and psychological problems for children who live
with domestic violence over other children. But not all children, and we must
not get into pathologising or imagining that it is inevitable that every child
will develop, let us say, clinical type symptoms or would necessarily need
professional intervention. Some children survive it, some children are able
to keep out of the way. They may have other adult support that they can use.
They may be very resilient. They may use school, for example, as somewhere
that is safe to go and spend other time and get over what is happening at
home. For some children, it has a bad effect on them while they are living
with it but once they are out and they are safe they feel much better. We had
children telling us that they were able to sleep again, that they were
feeling happier, that other problems had receded. There is some overlap with child abuse. There is
no clear agreement about the precise degree but there has been an overlap
when people have looked at the Child Protection Register, and [Page 9 ],
found at least a one third overlap. If a child is being abused, or suspected
of being abused, to the point where they are on a Child Protection Register,
there is a one in three chance at least that their mother is also being
abused. Interestingly, in at least two studies when researchers were involved
and looked more closely at those cases they found an overlap rising to two
thirds. It may be about awareness and again knowing what we are looking for
and asking the questions, although some of that was there in the case files
and wasn't being interpreted as domestic violence. Sometimes, I think in this country we have had too
great a split between children's services and services for women. What we
have got to do now is to bring those things together. Today is very much
about that. It is very much about thinking of an issue that has been seen as
a women's issue, domestic violence, but seeing that it also has an impact on
children and that we need to consider those two fronds of impact together.
For a whole range of reasons, including the fact that we will miss the risks
if we don't ask questions about both, and, crucially I think, because very
very often the best way of intervening is going to be to work out how to help
the woman be safe as well as helping the children be safe. That is going to
be the most effective child protection intervention in many cases. There is also an overlap with child sexual abuse.
We have had individual children talking to us about this in research. One
small study in Scotland of twenty children who were known or heavily
suspected to have been sexually abused found every single one of their
mother-s had also experienced some form of domestic violence, but only two of
them had ever had a professional talking to her about that. In both cases
that was in the voluntary sector, yet those children were all involved with a
range of statutory agencies. It was a few years ago now, and maybe we have
got better, but we do have to learn to ask those questions across what has
been a boundary in the past. The violence does not stop at separation. It
carries on and we are learning now to talk about post-separation violence,
the domestic violence, abuse, risk to women and to children that carries on
after one or other partner ends that relationship or attempts to do so.
Indeed, it would seem from research that the risks may get greater. This man
who has been attempting to exert power and control, to rule the roost, if you
like, feels completely affronted if the woman tries to break away and it is a
time of heightened risk for women: the time of a relationship splitting up
and afterwards, may be the most deadly time for women. Again a huge message
there for professionals because if we give simplistic messages, or even
instructions to women, "you must leave this man. If you don't,"
(dreadful phrase), "you are failing to protect the children." I am
afraid that is still in social work vocabulary. If we give that sort of rather simplistic
injunction to women as to how they should behave we are ignoring the fact
that they are the experts on what has been happening in their lives. They may
know that that would be placing them in the most deadly danger. It may be
right that they need to get away, but how they can do that without help? Are
we doing enough about telling them where the refuges are? Are we doing enough
as a nation about funding emergency and after-care and outreach services for
women and children through the voluntary sector? Still not, I think, and are
we doing enough about making sure that both women and children know there is
help available, following them through, not just sending them from pillar to
post but listening to them and seeing what forms of help would be most
appropriate ? [ page 10 ] Are we listening to children about contact?
Children in our most recent research and in other studies are quite able to
say when they are very frightened of this man who has been violent and when
they do not want to see him. So a thirteen year old talking here, "I definitely do not want to see him, I would
like to see my Mum's brothers and sisters and my Nan but I hate his guts and
I never want to see him again. He found out where we had moved to. He threw a
brick through the window and he hit Mum in the street and swore. I felt
scared and worried. He said he was going to kill our Mum." And this is a
girl who has lost count of the number of times the police have been called. It is not always that straightforward of course as
many children have mixed feelings, many children still love their fathers but
are scared of them. Again, it is down to the individual and it is down to
listening to the voices of children and trying to find out whether contact
can be made safer, or sometimes really whether it is just not the right thing
for children at this time. I am going to be a little bit controversial now
and show some figures that have come from a recent survey from the Women's
Aid Federation of England who have surveyed refuges to see whether the recent
changes have made any improvement. They are still very worried about the
dangers of contact. 127 refuges responded to the survey. 11 thought things had got better 11 thought they had got worse 66 thought they were about the same The others were don't knows. So 11 better, 11 worse. Almost half said there still were not adequate
safety measures in place if contact were granted without checking that there
were adequate safety measures in place. Only two said that children were definitely now
being listened to. Fewer than one in five had come across any cases
where contact had been refused 25% said there was no contact centre in their
area and most of those who did have a contact centre said it was low
vigilance so it could not be used safely where the man was still a very grave
danger. There have been incidents where the fact of a
contact hearing or some evidence used in that hearing which have had
addresses on them have been used to track women down. In 1998 one woman was
killed by an ex-partner who found out what county she was in because of where
the hearing was heard. Women are still being ordered to hand over
children for contact visits to men who are known to be dangerous. This
includes children who are known to have been on the Child Protection
Register, children whose mothers have been ordered to leave the man, or else
have the children taken away. Then they have been ordered by the courts to
hand over the same children to the same man on contact visits, including from
the survey by Women's Aid, to eight `Schedule One' offenders, and including
men who have breached injunctions and men who have previously been convicted
for violent offences. Children have experienced on contact visits every kind
of physical emotional and sexual abuse and trauma and abduction in the course
of contact visits and there has also been violence continuing to women
through contact visits. [ page 11]. So I do not think we have cracked it. Of course it
is very early days but it is very controversial because it has been a
decision really between whether the law should change, as has happened in
Northern Ireland and happened some while ago in New Zealand, as to whether
there should be a rebuttable presumption of no unsupervised contact unless
evidence can be produced that it will be safe or whether we can go ahead with
a non-mandatory system of guidelines. I wanted to be controversial right at
the beginning because I think it sets the terms of a debate for the day. What
are we doing through guidelines? Will we be able to achieve safety? Is there
more that we could do? There is some good news. We are starting to know
more about how we can help children. I tend to think of this in terms of
three kinds of prevention, primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. I will
do them backwards. Tertiary prevention is working with children and
getting over the worst effects of what has happened to them. I have spoken
about children's groups run with children from ages four upwards,
particularly in North America, and increasingly here. But, it is underfunded,
the old story, it's in the voluntary sector and it is patchy. Secondary prevention is trying to make sure it
doesn't happen again. Most of that work would be with adults, but there is
also work that can be done with children to help them be safe, again both in
groups and in direct work in one to one work with children. Safety planning
for a five year old included hiding under the bed if there was a violent
attack going on downstairs. Sometimes it can be learning not to intervene in
dangerous ways, learning how to call the police if you can get to the phone. Primary prevention is stopping it from ever
happening. We did a large quantitative survey of children in schools in which
we talked to a general population of children about what they knew about
domestic violence and what their attitudes were towards violence against
women. The bad news was, shockingly in this day and age, a third of the
teenage boys agreed with the statement that it is sometimes O.K. to hit a
woman. One in five of the girls agreed with that which is also very
frightening, but the good news was that they knew they didn't understand the
issues and they did want to talk about it in the school. Over 80% of
secondary school children wanted to learn about domestic violence in schools
and they wanted to understand why it happens, to know more about what it is
and they particularly wanted to have a sort of debate. They did not want
people to tell them what was what. They wanted to be able to think it through
and understand it more for themselves. The other element of the research was talking to
children who have lived with domestic violence. They are the experts on what
impact it has on them. They have said they want to be involved, they want
their mums to talk about what they are going to do, they want to help make
decisions and they all talked about having somebody to talk to. It was very
important to have friends, to talk to siblings and to have adults you could
trust and talk to. These children have lived through it, have understood the
pattern, have come to an understanding and could be very helpful in
developing materials that could be used with a wider population of children
in schools. There are some areas in the country where there is very good
preventative work going on in the schools but there really could be a lot
more of that. As one child said in a group of four children who had lived
with domestic violence, "Let's end violence everywhere". Why not
have it on the national curriculum, why not discuss it everywhere in schools?
It's everywhere in peoples' communities. A very large proportion of the
children in the survey knew someone it had happened to but we are not talking
to them about it and we are not using children and young peoples' own
expertise. [ page 12] e n d [ |
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Regents Park Conference Nov 2001 Contact and Domestic Violence ( Ivor.
Please note that Sturge, who followed Mullender onto the platform to speak,
stated she too shared Mullender's feminist perspective / views - on her
research - but that is not included in the 'official' printed version of the
text below RW, [who was present]. ). Ivor,
don't get fooled by what you perceive as their ignorance. They are using
reverse psychology. Sturge consistently uses that technique at length. She
uses this methodology in everything she does. She turns everything
around, but once you are aware of her technique you see it time and time
again. She only makes common sense if you reverse everything she says. Speech by Dr. Claire Sturge A consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist of
many, perhaps too many, years experience. She works for Harrow. Last year
with Dr. Glaser she produced a paper at the request of the official solicitor
for four appeal case which happened to be heard before Dame Elizabeth in the
cases of L.VM and H and the subject of that paper was Contact With Fathers
After Findings Of Domestic Violence. The Court of Appeal in that case laid down
certain guidelines informed by that paper. She frequently acts as an expert
in court and is also committed to and involved with the training of experts,
both to increase their numbers and, most importantly, to improve standards. " I am nervous so I am trying to pretend that
I am in court because I am more used to that! I am an ordinary jobbing child
psychiatrist and I am actually on call because I have no cover. So we will
have to hope there is no one taking overdoses or becoming psychotic today in
Harrow. My aims in talking to you are: 1. to talk about children and child development as
relevant to this subject 2. to talk about domestic violence and research in
the area as it relates to children 3. to try and integrate the two, so it is like
trying to develop an argument based on those two areas 4. to be a little bit controversial and
provocative. What I have to say is a good follow-on to
Professor Mullender's talk, which so aptly sets the scene as to children's
feelings. In comparison, what I have to say is rather dry and theory based. All children need a secure base, stability,
security, need for a sense of belonging, continuity, stimulation,
exploration, including social experience, a moral lead and model, validation,
and all of these are needed in healthy development and forming trusting
relationships. I am going to address one or two of those in a little more
detail. Attachment I want to focus on attachment because I feel it is
such a misunderstood and misused term. it is a description of specific behaviours it refers to a small child's behaviour in
situations of potential threat to their security it reflects the child's confidence in their
carer's ability to re-establish a safe situation it is all based on work with one to two year
olds, so it is very restricted. There are only two officially recognised disorders
of attachment, `inhibited' attachment disorders and `reactive' attachment
disorders. Those are the two official ones and are relative rare, seen mainly
in institutionalised children such as the Rumanian orphanages. Other terms are descriptive, as part of a child's
behaviour within a relationship. It is very important to remember that most
of those children who fall into the insecure attachment status, are in the
normal range, particularly the anxiously attached children, and they become
fairly well adjusted children. The lesson really, is that a secure attachment
is useful because it is a positive sign that all is well, if the rest of the
relationship is good, whereas insecure attachments just tell you a little bit
about the relationship and you need to look at other parts of it. The
exception is the disorganised attachment, which you see in abused children
and children where their carers are completely unpredictable, for example
psychotically ill mothers. Belonging and Continuity Belonging and continuity are the child's sense of
being part of an identified unit and being secure in that knowledge.
Continuity and the absence of significant separation or losses are important:
belonging and continuity are essential for development of identity. Educational and social development are very
important as are parents who play an increasingly recognised role in the
success of their children. There is a lot of interest currently, I am sure
you will know, in `emotional literacy' and we are beginning to see some
research indicating that families which encourage the identification and
expression of emotion produce better adjusted and more communicative
children, and which I see as part of education, both at school and at home. Validation Validation is the fact that a child's experience
of the world must include: a sense of being valued and nurtured that she is important enough to be protected that her individuality is acknowledged and
valued that the child's views, wishes and particular
needs are attended to So giving a child a sense of self worth is a very
central role in parenting. It is largely achieved through attention, warmth and
praise. Rutter's work in the sixties and seventies has borne the test of
time, and the amount of warmth that can be observed and even scored, between
a parent and his or child, is still an excellent predictor of that
relationship in the future and a good outcome for children. There has also been a lot of interest in this in
relation to personality development. For example, children who are born with
a poor emotional regulation, those rather unstable, moody children, and who
are also not validated through abuse or simply emotional neglect, tend to
develop borderline personality disorders. Validation in adolescence is
probably what makes the difference between those adolescents who go
completely off the rails and those who have just multiple blips. How relationships form and the abilities for
future parenting very much start within the parent/child relationship, then
the family relationships and finally wider relationships and sexual
partnerships. Internal coherence has become an important
concept. It is about the parents having a coherence in how they have
internalised their experience of parenting. In effect, you are measuring
whether they have been well parented themselves. You can make some
predictions on the basis of that about their parenting of the current child. Genetics As a proper doctor I must mention genetics. There
is, of course a heritability factor in aggression and violence. It is not a
strong one and research indicates that environmental factors, particularly
parenting, are at least as important. There is a recent study in Scandinavia
which was of children who were adopted and they separated those where one of
the biological parents had a history of violence or severe aggression and
those who did not. They were then placed, in what seemed to be a random way,
irrespective of their histories. The researchers found that: the ones who had, as it were, the `genetic
loading' showed perfectly good adjustment, so long as there was _not marital
conflict in the adoptive family children without the `genetic loading' who were
in families where there was marital conflict in the adoptive families on the
whole did not become violent. So you needed the two, the genetic loading and the
marital conflict. Carer Victimization Something else that influences my thinking is
carer victimisation. Here I am influenced by the work of an American, who was
particularly interested in the abuse of pre-school children. She has shown in
terms of disruption of their development and post traumatic symptoms, that
these very young children are much more affected by seeing their carer
threatened and attacked, than by direct abuse to themselves. That seems to me
to be a very important thing to remember. What is Domestic Violence ? "A malevolent act by one
family member against another with the intent of causing physical,sexual or
psychological damage ". I am using the term domestic violence to mean
inter partner violence. It has become a real problem because it is now being
used to mean physical abuse of children and even animals. I want to think at some features of domestic
violence that might be relevant to the children. I would like to emphasise
the violence outside the home, the morbid jealousy which is seen in a
minority. Denial is part of the pattern. If you meet a man
who immediately admits it, I think you are dealing with a different situation
from the classical domestic violence. There are lots of theories about why
there is quite such a high level of denial. It may be just protection of ones
pride or ego, but it may also be a further invalidation of the woman's
position, by making out she is talking idiotic nonsense. There are quite consistent results emerging about
the communication skills within these couples. On the whole, the male partner
in violent relationships has less good verbal and communication skills and
less adequate social skills than the woman. I find that quite helpful
thinking in my assessments. What is important is trying to see whether the
mother has significant parenting difficulties and whether these are as a
result of the domestic violence, this kind of encroaching sense of paralysis
and inadequacy, or whether she has parenting problems in any case. The Child's Situation, There are three main groups: 1. Indirect witnessing - these children are aware
of the domestic violence, but they are not directly involved. The inferred
would be things like, "Mum's not in her bed in the morning" or
"Mum's got bruises to her face" or "Nobody's speaking in the
house" and the child is perfectly aware that this is the result of some
pretty conflicted situation. 2. These children are present, they are witnesses. 3. These children are involved i.e. they are
trying to intervene or they get hit in the process of the fight between the
adults. People talk about the double whammy, the exposure into parental
violence and the experience of physical abuse directly to them, separate from
the domestic violence. So what problems is the child
going to have? It really makes no difference whether you compare
the `aware' versus the `witness' versus the `involved,' or even the `double
whammy': you cannot distinguish them on the severity of the outcome for the
children. I have become really very concerned about the amount of physical
abuse and the amount that we are probably all missing. There are two very
important studies of about eleven or twelve thousand families in the forces.
A graph of domestic violence incidents showed that if you are at nought, the
child is almost certainly not going to be physically abused; at 25 reported
incidents, this is quite severe domestic violence, it is 50% likely that the
will be physically abused; and at 50 incidents you can more or less guarantee
the child is also being beaten. This is really quite powerful stuff in terms
of the connection. I have been challenged about other research that
indicates the involvement of women. It is an enormous subject and I am
extremely well read in it and I have come down very firmly on the side of the
sort of line Professor Mullender was taking. There are, of course, the women
whose motive, in the terms of how I defined domestic violence, who wished to
degrade, abuse, terrify etc., are extremely rare. There are quite a few who
are good little fighters and there is some very interesting work in America
in the states where they have compulsory arrest for any reported incident of
domestic violence, which has allowed people to study these women and that is
quite an extreme end of the violent women and, still, they are not like the
men. The Effects of Domestic Violence
on a Family - a Summary Attachment - in a domestic violence situation
there is no secure base. There is no one to put fearful or threatening
situations right and their carer is someone who they see as attacked and not
someone they can run to for safety. Belonging and continuity - there are
likely to be many disruptions, police visits, scenes with their mother and
they become quite unclear what their family unit is. Warmth and approval - even
higher than the amount of physical abuse in these families is the
over-punitiveness. It is not just a smack: these children are severely
punished often. Which is obviously the opposite of warmth and approval and
there can be a lot of emotional abuse in terms of critical comments. Social and educational needs - a
significant proportion of these children do not do well in school Modelling -they are
having a very distorted models of behaviour and relationships. Moral lead - I put this
separate because I think they learn that it is right to hit and abuse and
degrade and to lie and to deny and to cover up. So that is what they are told
about right and wrong. The validation of self -they are
obviously experiencing much more terror and distress and that is likely to be
ignored in the bigger picture of the parents' enmeshment in their battles. There is a deviant model of relationship- forming. In effect, the impact on the child of domestic
violence can affect each and every area of her basic needs and in my mind all
her human rights are infringed. An Example - Osmond, aged 9
years. He told me about his parents' violence and how
when they started arguing and hitting he would take his little brother into
the back room where they had a telly and they turned it very loud so that
they couldn't hear what was going on next door. However, every now and then, he would peep into
the kitchen to check that his mother and father were still alive. He said,
"Sometimes I wonder if one of them might be dead." If his father
saw him when he poked his head around the door he got a wallop and was told,
"Get lost you little bastard." Osmond explained to me that bastard
means unknown father and that sometimes Daddy accuses his Mum of making him
with another man. `Attachment' - he showed features in his play,
talk and behaviour of an anxious attachment to both parents. `Belonging and continuity' - Osmond had three
times fled with his mother to motels after fights. The last time he was
abandoned there when his mother overdosed. The family has moved frequently.
He doesn't know where he belongs because of all that his father says, and he
is not quite sure that he is his father, and he knows that whatever his mum
says she will go back to this man. Warmth and approval - he does erratically
experience this but it is unpredictable and he is as likely to be sworn at
and told that he is rubbish. Modelling - he has seen both of his parents lash
out; he has heard his mother lie about why she has bruises. He has been told
not to tell anyone what happens at home or else he "will get what
for". He has seen his father abuse police officers when they have
attended the home. In terms of moral lead his father has told him that any
boy who doesn't hit back is a wimp. He has learned how to look after himself,
he told me proudly. He knows that all girls are slags and the police fascist
pigs. He has seen his father hiding the TV whenever there is a knock on the
door. At school he is at risk of permanent exclusion for aggressive behaviour
and offensive and racist language. Validation - when, at a joint interview, Osmond
told his mother how he feels about them fighting, she tells him not to be
silly. When Osmond told her in front of me that he wants to come home but
only when the fighting stops, she turned to him and tells him, indeed,
commanded him to tell me that it had been a very long time since there had
been a fight and that he wanted to come home that day. He was in a very
difficult position about what he then said to me. He cried in the interview
because he said that his mother didn't like him because she criticised him
all the time. All that illustrates how many facets of the
child's needs can be affected. It is often weeks or even months when one is
assessing them that one begins to realise how much they have been affected,
and the research, which again Professor Mullender referred to, is unanimous
in showing greatly increased rates of these disorders. There is controversy
about things like gender effects, whether girls and boys are affected
differently. How important is the age of the child at the time? How important
is the length of the time of the abuse? and so on, but the general rule is
that probably 50% of children in chronic domestic situations will have
significant effects to their development. If we look at the long term, we do have a gender
difference. It is the boys who tend to become anti-social and be domestically
violent themselves. Although the girls may seek out victim behaviours, so
very much like the sequelae of sexual abuse to an extent, there is also an
increasing aggression in women. You could see this as a cycle that the
inability to trust, the poor attachments and the lack of validation lead to
far reaching problems which will then affect the next generation, and that
witnessing the violent subjugation of others and threats to your care-giver
have neuro-developmental effects. There are now quite a few papers supporting
this: a review by Daniel Glaser showed actual neurological differences
between children who have and have not been abused both emotionally and
physically. Perhaps in a few years you will have some form of scan done and
given to the court to indicate damage. Separation and Contact. How does all this relate to decisions about
contact post separation? In considering contact, many facets of the situation
need to be considered in order to make decisions about the child's future
adjustment and contact with her parents. A starting point for me, and I would say this
research is unequivocal, is that women are at the severest risk at the time of
separation and in the year or two following that. That is certainly when you
get a peak in the murders. So separation initially increases the likelihood
of violence. Secondly, there are offspring. The child contact
is frequently used as the opportunity for such violence or emotional abuse,
or for the gathering of information, that allows the father to track the
family. Thirdly, by definition a violent parent has put
his child's needs second to his own and his own deviant needs. He has
abdicated his parental responsibility. So, I am first thinking about what one would want
to assess in relation to the child and I think these are all fairly standard.
However, I would like to emphasise that I am just horrified by the number of
children who go to contact as a result of an order and have no idea why.
Nobody has talked to them about why mummy and daddy don't live together
anymore or asked them what they remember about things. When I am doing a
summary in a report, I sit there thinking if I were the judge, if I were
talking to this child in twelve years time, what would I say was the reason
that we decided that the child should see the violent parent? To me it is
another form of validation, and by just saying well we just go on as normal
except dad's living there and mum is living in the other place makes a
nonsense of all the child's experiences in terms of what they have seen
happening and their experiences of it. The Mediators I am thinking here of the emotional state of the
mum. Is she regaining her confidence and strength? I am sure those who work
in refuges here will support me, as you will have seen women who, in a
relatively short time are transformed. You cannot believe it is the same
woman who was a sort of shaking, dithering mess, who could not decide about
anything when you first saw her, and maybe a couple of months later is now
telling you that she has found herself again. She had forgotten who she was
and feels clear and strong about what she wants to do. But, there are often
huge issues about the relationship, whether it is over or not, whatever
anybody says. There are issues about parenting and, when we ask if she can
keep the child safe, I think we also have to ask if the court is allowing her
to keep the child safe. We cannot judge her without also taking that into
account. Of course, very important are her support systems. There are many other mediating factors. What is
the attitude of the father and this should be part of any assessment. Is
there any acknowledgement of what has been going on? Can he see anything
about what damage his behaviour, their behaviour, may have done to the child
or is his denial so high that that is just something to be joked about and
not discussed. Is there any motivation for change, has he gone out to look
for some help with his anger or to do with his relationship? Is he willing
to? Any thoughts of how to repair the damage he has done? Has he ever talked
to the child or is he willing to talk about what he has done. Being sorry
about it is another form of repair and being able to tell the child about the
good things about their mother is very important. For example, " You
know, whatever I said about her being this that and the other, actually she
is a wonderful mother". That can do a great deal of good repairing. I would be looking at the motivations for contact.
It is quite difficult to tell. I sometimes just let them talk for an hour and
make a kind of score, whether I am hearing more about the child or more about
the woman when the father is talking about contact, in order to try and make
some kind of judgement about what he is really after, when he insists he is
totally committed to the child. This is my next big message and the only one, if
you only want to take one away, and that is the purpose of contact.
Everything falls into place once you define what the purpose of contact is
and what you are expecting from it. So the sorts of things you would be
looking at: Is it to retain a strong and positive
relationship i.e. is there a strong and positive relationship which is worth investing in? If not, are you aiming to try to
produce that. Perhaps they have had a terrible relationship with beatings and all the rest but you think there is
some hope that the child and his father can have a positive relationship. Is it a more limited thing like providing
knowledge about the child's other parent and their heritage? Is it for reparation? Does one think that some
therapeutic work or cleverly managed contact could actually help repair some things for the child? Are there developmental advantages? Some things
the father has some particular area of skill to offer and what are the likely
benefits for the child going to be? So I would go much further than Professor
Mullender in that I don't just want safe contact, I want contact that is
going to really do something positive for this child. The Moral Issue I feel the courts, all of us, fudge the moral
issues. It is a really serious matter when a court tells a child that they
want him or her to have contact with a person whom they know has done very
very bad and evil things. What is that going to do in the long term? Morals
has almost become a dirty word hasn't it? The general feeling is that contact must be good
for the child. We do not have to think about anything else. It is assumed. So my personal propositions. Professor Mullender called it a rebuttable
presumption against contact, that is where there has been a
finding, not where everyone is still fighting about who is telling the truth and
who is not. I would like courts to take much more interest in all parental
situations, and into whether or not there might be domestic violence. I know
judges have big piles of papers and when things are agreed they just want to
get through the pile, but that worries me. The other bit of research I feel I have to mention
and judges don't like this and don't seem to hear it but one very robust
(Tape ends here). You can compare that with contact with and without father,
with moves with losses and so on and so forth. That stands out like a beacon and no one has shown that contact makes a
difference to eventual outcome. That doesn't, of course, mean that
it doesn't but no one has yet shown that and,
of course, we know that over sixty per cent of men actually disappear from
their children's lives within two years. So it is quite a
difficult and complicated picture. I am just going to put this up and sit
down. E N D @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Rebuttal of Sturge and Glasers denial that PAS exists. http://www.rgardner.com/refs/ar19.html or http://www.equalparenting.org/s_&_g_rebutal.htm |
|
X Dame Elizabeth Butler -Sloss is the President of
the Family Division - about as high as you can get in English family
(laugh) law courts and on a par the Canada's Supreme Court Madame Justice
Claire L'Heureux-Dubι (a well-known feminist judge). However, Elizabeth
Butler-Sloss is not well-known as a feminist judge but sides with them too
many times to be impartial. Quote :- It
is, in my view, particularly apposite to look again at contact since
organisations representing fathers are becoming increasingly vocal about the
way they consider they are unfairly treated by the family courts." -
Butler -Sloss, Nov 2001. Butler-Sloss, Nov 2001 Shortened version:- " As President of the Family Division, and
particularly continuing my predecessor's post as a Patron of your
organisation, under its new name of Children Law UK, I am delighted both to
support the work of the organisation generally, and today's event in
particular. I am impressed and delighted that so many renowned experts in
their field have given their time to speak today on what is, undoubtedly, not only an extremely important subject but
also a complex one, perhaps how complex has been particularly shown to us by
Claire Sturge. You have heard the experts [http://www.rgardner.com/refs/ar19.html or http://www.equalparenting.org/s_&_g_rebutal.htm
], I now give you the lawyers'
approach, at least a lawyer's approach. One area of concern about children which
has been in the past somewhat under-appreciated is in respect of children one
of whose parents, or carers has been violent to the other carer. As you all
know, domestic violence has in the last two years or so rightly received
publicity and greater public awareness. I hope that you will forgive me,
despite the earlier speakers, for giving an overview of the subject. The evidence of the existence of
widespread domestic assaults by one partner on the other is incontrovertible.
The majority of victims, according to research, are women, although there is
a significant minority of female aggressors. [ http://www.ivorcatt.com/2023.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/07088.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/17137.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/19165.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/THE%20REAL%20GOAL%20OF%20FEMINISM.htm
; Men are so routinely
stereotyped as 'violent' now, that the slander is rarely challenged.]
There is extensive research on the large number of women who have been
victims of violence in the home and the adverse effects upon them and upon
their ability to function normally. The research has also shown the adverse
effect upon their parenting skills. Domestic violence covers a wide range of
unacceptable behaviour within the family and may take many forms. Indirect
violence, threats and verbal abuse may, in certain cases, be as detrimental
as actual violence and may have an equally destabilising effect on the other
partner. Violence is a form of emotional or psychological abuse as well as
physical assault. The research has also shown that the majority of women do
not go to the police and do not disclose the violence to their general
practitioners. This may be due to fear of repercussions or stigmatism or
feelings of shame. Magistrates hear the more frequent
complaints of assault by one partner against the other, or by each partner
against the other. The police
have been and continue to be called to the scene of warring partners and the
violence has often been recorded as a domestic dispute. The description
`domestic dispute', particularly where the physical injuries were not severe,
may have contributed to a widespread view in the past that domestic violence
was not a serious matter. It is also true that a significant number of women
make complaints to the police and then withdraw them, often on the day of the
hearing before the magistrates. The withdrawal of the proceedings is not a
fair indication of the seriousness of the assaults but may be the result of
other factors, including pressure from the other partner, or recognition of the difficulties for the complainant and her
children flowing from the outcome of the hearing. Over the years there have been attempts
to raise the profile of violence in the home. Erin Pizzey opened the first
women's refuge in Chiswick, West London in 1973. She wrote of her experiences
in a book entitled "Shout (sic) Quietly
or the Neighbours Will Hear". http://www.bennett.com/ptv/index.shtml http://www.dvmen.org/dv-70.htm [When will Sloss read Erins later books?] http://www.mensrights.com.au/dv13o.htm
[ I DARED TO SAY PUBLICLY THAT WOMEN CAN BE AS VIOLENT AS MEN AND THAT
WOMEN WERE A GREAT DEAL MORE PSYCHOLOGICALLY VIOLENT THAN MEN I sighed because those two
sentences uttered twenty-five years ago in my early work at Chiswick caused
me to be hated and despised. I became the nation's conscience. I dared to say
publicly that women can be as violent as men and that women were a great deal
more psychologically violent than men. Pizzey ] Women's refuges have now opened all over the country and there is
a national organisation entitled `Refuge' founded to assist women and
children who are victims of violence. Marital conflict and family violence
has been the subject of an increasing number of medical papers and
publications. It has become an issue of increasing concern for the Home
Office, the Lord Chancellor's Department and the Department of Health. In
passing Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996, which provides for remedies
against molestation and for occupation orders, Parliament clearly had the
problems of domestic violence well in mind. . In extreme cases, such as the murder
of the mother by the father, the effect upon the children was obvious to
everyone. The effect upon the child of witnessing assaults and threats was
less obvious. As Dr Sturge has told you, on the
22"d March 2000 the Court of Appeal, Thorpe LJ Waller LJ and I, heard
four appeals which had been grouped together in order for us to look at the
issue of contact where there had been violence in the home (re L, re V, re M
and re H [20001 2 FLR 334). The Official Solicitor, at our request, provided
the Court of Appeal with a joint report from Dr Sturge and Dr Glaser, both
distinguished child psychiatrists. [The report appeared in Family Law, July
2000 at page 506]. There were over 200 responses to the
paper and the Sub-Committee sent its final Report to the Lord Chancellor on
the 29th February 2000. The Lord Chancellor permitted us to see
a copy of the Children Act Sub-Committee Report [Contact between children and
violent parent: the question of parental contact in cases where there is
domestic violence'] before its publication. We gave, in our judgements some
general guidance on this important issue (see Butler-Sloss P at pp336 -344;
Thorpe LJ pp 359 - 370; Waller LJ p371). We need to tap in to the increasing
knowledge of the effect of violence within the family upon the children. If one
stopped to think, it would be obvious that it would be so. Marital
disharmony, particularly demonstrated by endless arguments and quarrels and
the resultant tension within the family are well known to affect children. There are four points, which among
others, are, in my view, of particular significance in an application for
contact: a) the extent of the violence b) the effect upon the primary carer
c) the effect upon the child d) the ability of the offender to recognise his
behaviour and attempt to change it. Where violence has been alleged, it will
be a matter for the court to decide whether, if proved, that violence would
be relevant to the issue of contact. Where the
allegations made, if proved, may
have an effect on the outcome, the court must adjudicate on them and find
them proved or not proved. As the Court
of Appeal pointed out in re L and others, there is, and there should be, no automatic presumption against contact in a
case where domestic violence has been established. It is one highly relevant
factor amongst many which must be taken into account when the difficult
balancing exercise is carried out by the judge applying the welfare principle
and the welfare checklist, s (1 (1) and (3) of the Children Act 1989. Of importance here is also that the
court does explore allegations of violence, even where the parties to a
contested application for contact subsequently appear to have reached
agreement. The court must be aware that there may be situations in which a
respondent mother (as is more often the case) feels pressurised into agreeing
to some form of contact with the result that the allegations of violence are
never investigated. Domestic violence is, of course, an
assault, a criminal offence, and should not be regarded as any less serious
because it occurs in the "domestic" arena. The Magistrates Association is currently
looking into the problem of the seeming lack of communication between
criminal and civil courts, in particular where perpetrators of violence, who are the subject
of criminal proceedings are granted bail in circumstances where the
magistrates are unaware that they are already bound by civil injunctions
seeking to protect the victim. This is an area raised by Auld LJ in his
report on the criminal courts. An important consideration, when
considering if the fact of domestic violence is relevant to the issue of
contact, is the effect upon the primary carer of the violence after the
separation. Many victims of violence remain afraid of their former partners
and that fear is obviously communicated to the child, not necessarily by the
parent telling the child of his/her fear. As in other areas of family law where
children are concerned, the stability of the placement for the child is of
crucial importance since its breakdown, or the undue fragility of the primary
carer, can have serious consequences for the child. In a situation where the court is faced with an application for
contact which could not effectively be arranged without the risk of serious harm being caused
to the primary carer the court would have to approach the issue of contact
with extreme caution. It
is clear from the body of mental health and social work research and a long
line of authority that the protection of the primary carer for the benefit of
the child is of primary importance. In serious cases
of violence, if contact is to take place, it may be necessary to provide
safeguards under Part IV of the Family Law Act 1996. The courts may not have always
sufficiently taken into account the ongoing consequences for the child of
contact with a non-resident parent who has been seriously physically or
psychologically violent towards the primary carer. Dr Sturge and Dr Glaser, in their report to the Court of
Appeal, reminded us all that domestic violence in a family where there are
children is a significant failure of parenting. The
reluctance of the child in these circumstances to see the non-resident,
violent parent, may have a firm basis. The wishes and feelings of a child who
has lived in a violent household have to be given appropriate weight. There will be a small number of
difficult cases in which the child would be entitled to have a guardian to
represent him/her in order for the viewpoint of the child to be presented
adequately to the court. Judges in private family law cases in particular
should have this in mind when considering an application for contact where
there have been allegations or findings of domestic violence. This point was
made clearly by Lady Justice Hale in re A [representation of child's
interests] Court of Appeal, 20th November 2000 (referred to in Family Law,
volume 31 page 241) who said: "The evidence is now quite clear
that children whose parents are separating, and especially if their parents
are in conflict with one another, need a voice, someone who is able to listen
to anything they wish to say and tell them what they need to know. Sometimes
they need more than this and that is someone who is able to orchestrate an
investigation of the case on their behalf. " d) The ability of the offender to recognise
his/her behaviour and attempt to change it Once the court has found proved violence
which is significant and relevant to the disposal of the case, the court must
not only consider the effects of that violence on the child and the primary
carer, but should also consider the response of the perpetrator of the
violence As I said in that appeal [Re L ] : " In the light of the findings of
the judge of serious violence by the father including a catalogue of sadistic
violence, that he had a very real anger and control problem, and the denial
by the father of the facts found by the judge, the judge 's decision not to
grant direct contact was entirely in line with the clear advice in the
psychiatric report provided to this court. The judge said " ....it might be a good idea for
him to look in a mirror and begin to accept what he is and what his role has
been in the mother's life and during her pregnancy with T and subsequent to
her birth. The sooner he comes to terms with the fear he has caused and the
long-term emotional scars he has caused, the better." The risks to the child were obvious and
the father, in refusing to face up to them, was clearly unable to reduce
those risks. " Mr Justice Wall set out in re M
(Contact: Violent Parent) [1999] 2 FLR 321, the importance of the violent
parent understanding the consequences of the violence and consideration being
given by the court to his/her capacity and genuine desire to change. If
necessary, this should include the violent parent seeking help for
aggression. Relevant protection for the primary
carer may be necessary at all stages. An
application for interim contact may require careful consideration. It
obviously depends upon the seriousness of the allegations, but, if
sufficiently serious, proper
precautions must be taken to protect the child and the primary carer. In some
cases that may mean no contact or only contact in carefully supervised
circumstances together with, where appropriate, suitable injunctive relief. If the court decides that interim
contact is appropriate, it will have to consider how contact will take place
and whether precautions need to be taken. This may also apply to arrangements for continuing contact. As
a patron of the National Association of Child Contact Centres, I should at
this stage put in a plea for the contact centres all round the country. The majority of them are staffed by competent volunteers who are
not qualified and should not be asked to deal with violent or abusive
parents. If there is any danger of
misbehaviour by the offending parent, it is NOT appropriate to make an order
for contact to take place at a supported contact centre. It does well to remember at this stage
that such forms of contact are not themselves without risk to the child. As
the Court of Appeal pointed out in Re L (above), supervised contact or
contact only at a contact centre is not an appropriate long-term solution to
contact issues. In Re M, no effort was made to move the contact on from
supervision by the mother in the contact centre. The contact came to an end
after an argument between the parents in front of G who subsequently said
that he did not want to see his father. The father started proceedings in February 1998. Attempts were
made to restart contact. The child was taken to the contact centre but he
refused to see his father. By the date of the hearing the boy had not seen
his father for 2 years. In this case, although the violence had
a lasting effect on the mother, violence does not appear to me to be the main
cause of the refusal of contact by the mother. The judge formed the view that the source of the problem was the long
period of contact at the contact centre
and that the matter should have been tackled years before. . It would seem that, for a normal boy, the contact over the
years in the contact centre must have lacked stimulus and interest and the relationship between the father and son does not appear to have
had an opportunity to blossom and develop.
In the psychiatric report, unstimulating experiences which were lacking in
interest, fun or in extending the child and his experiences, were included
among the risks of direct contact with the non-resident parent. The courts naturally start with the view
that in most cases contact between the child and the non-resident parent is
desirable both for the child and for the parent. It accords with the general welfare of the child under section
1 of the Children Act 1989 and with Article 8 of the European Convention on
Human Rights and Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
However, serious cases of physical or psychological violence to the other
parent, where there are children in the family, have to be treated by the
courts with an extra degree of caution, recognising of course that the welfare of the child is paramount. http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/zbbsloss.htm Finally, I should like to touch briefly
on the issue of enforcement of contact orders. The problem of the resident
parent who refuses to allow the other parent to see the child is a real and
significant one. It works both ways but is most obvious when the resident
parent is the mother. It is
crucial that the court should resolve at an early stage whether the
opposition of the resident parent is justified, e.g. violence by the other
partner, or not justified. The arrival of the stepparent is a further and not
always welcome complication. It is, in my view, particularly apposite
to look again at contact since organisations representing fathers are
becoming increasingly vocal about the way they consider they are unfairly
treated by the family courts. The Australian legislation set out in
the consultation paper deserves careful consideration. The new regime will have three phases: 1. In the first, the obligations on both
parties created by an order are set out, together with the penalties that
will be occurred on breach of any of these obligations. At this stage
information will also be provided to the parties about parenting programmes to
assist them in their new parental responsibilities. 2. If the first order is breached the
court can require the parent to attend a "post separation parenting
programme", which may involve anger management, to explore the reasons
for non-compliance. Compensatory contact may also be ordered. 3. The third stage arises where there
has been a second breach, or where an initial breach has been serious or
flagrant. The court can impose a range of sanctions including community service,
a bond or fine and imprisonment. The court can also return to the second
stage where it feels that further parenting programme attendance may be
warranted. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Full text. Regents
Park Conference Nov 2001 |