(1/5) 📢 NEW REPORT: Victim blaming in our family courts is real, widespread, and shaping decisions about children’s safety.
Our analysis of 91 published judgments in England and Wales found that 72.5% contained victim-blaming language — predominantly impacting mothers.
“If you’ve ever seen the film Sleeping with the Enemy, that was my 11 years,” says Veronica, who then ended up in family court with her abuser.
Artice: I left my abuser – and then the family court gave him my children: https://t.co/BmZkAIwGXl
My book on how abusive fathers exploit the justice system against mothers and children The System Is The Weapon https://t.co/9tYSgLrCVC
@NataliePage@FiLiAHagueMums@RightToEquality Research was only in relation to the published judgement. Unpublished ones would most likely contain even more gender-bias, mysoginy and victim-blaming, transferring residency of kids to abusers from protective mothers.
They took your fear and used it against you.
When you felt anxious about your child being with their abusive father, the family court didn’t see a mother protecting her child.
They saw “anxiety.”
They saw “hostility.”
They saw “alienation.”
When your child showed fear, when they cried, froze, or begged not to go, the system didn’t investigate why.
It investigated YOU.
Your trauma responses and your child’s trauma responses were twisted into evidence that you were the danger.
This is how the weaponised system works.
It doesn’t just ignore abuse.
It punishes you for reacting to it.
The System Is The Weapon names this cruel reality so clearly.
You were never the problem for being afraid.
You were never the problem for wanting your child to be safe.
https://t.co/13rr9J86h2
Victim-blaming isn’t a flaw in the family courts. It’s the feature that lets abusers win.
The process is the punishment, the system is the weapon.
https://t.co/sHilgPacIW
🚨 Family courts are failing women and children. The evidence is undeniable.
New @RighttoEquality report finds 72.5% of judgments in domestic abuse cases contain judicial victim-blaming. 530 instances — mostly from judges. Mothers discredited, their trauma trivialised, rape myths repeated, abusers excused while their behaviour is minimised.
This isn’t “neutrality”. It’s institutional misogyny that puts kids at risk and re-traumatises survivors.
The report lands in Parliament TODAY.
Enough secrecy. Enough bias. Enough judges marking their own homework.
Read the full Guardian exposé:
https://t.co/EzaAydOLTt
The book for those who've lived it: The System Is The Weapon https://t.co/IiILdHVF3u
(2/5) We analysed 91 published family law judgments in England and Wales. 72.5% contained at least one instance of judicial victim-blaming. Across those judgments, our researchers identified 530 separate instances — made by court professionals, primarily judges.
'72.5% of all judgments contained at least one instance of judicial victim‑blaming and also evidence of gender bias with “mothers’ behaviour scrutinised intensely while the fathers’ conduct was contextualised or minimised' #familycourt. via @Right2Equality https://t.co/y6J5JocsEb
Are you a mother in #familycourt? Have you been accused of 'parental alienation?' Welcome to the blueprint...where protective mothers are branded as 'liars' 'alienators' 'hysterical'. You are protective. #DontBelieveTheHype https://t.co/BhI0YadfSH
Ten women reported Judge Phillip Lancaster to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office over alleged misconduct. Their complaints were initially dismissed.
@DrProudman represented the women in 2025 during the initial stages of their claim against the JCIO.
BREAKING 🚨: Reform has announced if they are the next government in their first 100 days of office they will release every file, email, memo and record held by central government, local authorities, police forces and the Home Office relating to grooming gangs over the past 40 years.
The identities of victims will be protected, but no official will be allowed to hide.
They will also increase police and National Crime Agency taskforce funding by £300 million, taking it to £400 million, so they can adequately investigate the perpetrators and the complicit police officers, social workers and politicians who enabled them. They will be given every resource they require.
This is our plan to finally deliver justice for our girls.
https://t.co/MHvGSvPila
@MyCafcass Cafcass leadership has a long pattern of encouraging abuse-denial practices which mistreated abuse victims terribly.
Her legacy includes an absolute pasting in various gov't reports for awful practices.
Now she denies any possibility that a social worker might be a domestic abuser.
The public do not deserve an abuse-denier at the helm of a critical children's safeguarding organisation.
Tiotto's gotta go
Thrilled to have won Campaign of the Year with @louisetickle for our reporting on the case of Sara Sharif and our Court of Appeal challenge to the ban on the naming of judges. Huge thanks to our barrister Chris Barnes KC and to @tortoise and @lawforchangee for funding our appeal.
@UNSRVAW@CedawUn What is the point of those reports/recommendations if they don’t change anything. It’s already like a joke. Mothers and kids still suffer lots of harm by the FC but they just write reports and have laugh. As no human noticing harm vulnerable would stay silent. CEDAW can
Under Reform’s proposals for post-separation child arrangements laws, the UK will be a dangerous place to be a mother leaving an abusive relationship, or just to be a mother. We will be living in the Handmaids Tale.
If we have a Reform government and you’re thinking of getting married and/or having a baby, don’t. Just don’t.
NEW: I interviewed Dylan* who was taken from his mother aged nine by the family courts. She was barred from seeing him for six years after he was removed on the advice of an unregulated psychologist. Now, reunited, they tell their story for the first time. https://t.co/jMi1eA6fGC