Family Court judgments 2022

[2022] EWFC B8

14 January 2022

Judge: Soraya McKinnell

Expert: Melanie Gill

Barrister for father: Femi Ogunlende (McFarlane’s Transparency Implementation Group)

 

[2022] EWHC 108

20 January 2022

Judge: Stephen Cobb

Barrister for mother: Charlotte Proudman instructed by Beck Fitzgerald

 

A and B (Child Arrangements: Parental Alienation) [2022] EWFC B11

26 January 2022

Judge: Recorder Laura Moys

Parental alienation by the father against the mother.

Expert not named: “clinical psychologist Dr S… a very experienced expert who is well-known to the family Court”. The expert is male.

Father represented by Andrew Bagchi.

Transparency Project: “Something is going on with experts” commented on a “smattering of recent judgments involving psychologists or so-called ‘alienation experts’ who are anonymised. Some of them are specific that the instructed expert was a ‘clinical psychologist’ (which is a protected title and regulated), but others do not even give this limited information. See, for example :

  •  A and B (Child Arrangements: Parental Alienation) [2022] EWFC B11. Unnamed court and unnamed clinical psychologist, who identifies alienation.

  •  F v M [2021] EWFC B101 (not published until 2022). Unnamed court, and all experts and social worker anonymised and discipline / qualifications not stated.

This is not normal. Both in the sense that it is not usual practice to anonymise experts in Family Court judgments (and guidance supports the naming of experts in general eg the 2014 Publication of Judgments Guidance issued by Sir James Munby as President), and in the sense that it is odd. There is nothing in the judgments we’ve seen to indicate any reason for needing to afford anonymity to these experts – there may be explanations but if there are the judges have not summarised them in their judgments, which is regrettable.”

F v M [2022] EWFC 74

17 February 2022

Recorder Talbott allowed the mother’s appeal to include her allegation of non-consensual sexual touching in public in the fact-finding hearing, which would examine her other allegations of coercive and controlling behaviour and the father’s counter allegation of parental alienation.

 

[2022] EWCA Civ 468

2 March 2022

Judges: Geoffrey Vos, Andrew McFarlane, Eleanor King

Barrister for mother: Jessica Lee

Fact finding in favour of the mother overturned. Father accused mother of parental alienation.

K v K – Court of Appeal give guidance on fact-finding hearings and on MIAMs, Julie Doughty, Transparency Project, 15 April 2022

What happened to the Ks?, Charlotte Baker, Transparency Project, 15 December 2023

 
 

[2022] EWHC 800 (Fam)

4 April 2022

Judge: Emma Arbuthnot

Judge Khatun Sapnara had ordered a transfer of residence from the mother to the father on the advice of “Dr Willemson” - presumably Hessel Willemsen - after finding that the mother had coached the children to make false allegations against the father and sought to “recruit professionals to her own view of the father, and to alienate them from him”. However, she had declined the father’s request for a costs order against the mother. Judge Emma Arbuthnot refused to award costs for the relocation hearing and welfare hearing, but awarded £37,000 costs to the father for the fact finding hearing.

 
 

Ben Jonas Alcott v Katy Elizabeth Ashworth & Anor [2022] EWHC 3687 (Fam)

13 April 2022

Judge: Emma Arbuthnot

Fathers 4 Justice

 

[2022] EWHC 1017 (Fam)

4 May 2022

Louise Tickle v Hereford County Council

Judge: Nathalie Lieven

 

[2022] EWFC 92

28 June 2022

Judge: Recorder Shelley Hesford

Experts: Nicholas Alwin and Gordon Milson of Bury

Local authority: Salford

Transfer of residence from mother to father.

Followed by:

[2023] EWFC 35

Mother’s application for reversal of transfer of residence rejected.

 

[2022] EWFC 89

11 July 2022

Judge: Lindsay Davies

Expert: Melanie Gill

 

[2022] EWCA Civ 982

15 July 2022

Judges: Julia Macur, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nugee

The Metropolitan Police Service appealed against an order by Judge Michael Keehan forbidding the police (or local authority) from interviewing the two children about their complaints of abuse by their father following a forced transfer of residence from the mother to the father on the grounds of parental alienation diagnosed by Janine Braier and Karen Woodall. The appeal was allowed.

This case follows on from A and B (Parental Alienation: No.1, No.2, No.3 and No.4)

 

[2022] EWHC 2146 (Fam)

8 August 2022

Judge: Nathalie Lieven from an earlier judgement by Judge Hilary Watson.

Expert: Trish Barry-Relph

Barrister for father: Sarah Tyler of Coram Chambers instructed by Venters Solicitors.

Warwickshire County Council and HHJ Watson agreed with the father that this was a case of parental alienation and a transfer of residence was ordered. Independent social worker and parental alienation expert, Trish Barry-Relph, was instructed to carry out a Therapeutic Residential Reunification Plan. The children ran away from home. Z was placed with a foster carer and became suicidal. The guardian agreed she was competent to instruct her own legal representation. Judge Lieven ordered that Z should be allowed to return to live with her mother.

Reported by Julie Doughty at the Transparency Project.

 

[2022] EWHC 800 (Fam)

4 April 2022

Judge: Emma Arbuthnot

Judge Khatun Sapnara had ordered a transfer of residence from the mother to the father on the advice of “Dr Willemson” - presumably Hessel Willemsen - after finding that the mother had coached the children to make false allegations against the father and sought to “recruit professionals to her own view of the father, and to alienate them from him”. However, she had declined the father’s request for a costs order against the mother. Judge Emma Arbuthnot refused to award costs for the relocation hearing and welfare hearing, but awarded £37,000 costs to the father for the fact finding hearing.