\n<\/p>\n
A report has found \u201cwidespread and concerning evidence\u201d of bias and victim-blaming in the family courts \u2013 primarily disadvantaging women.<\/p>\n
The report, Scratching the Surface: Victim-Blaming and Bias in Family Court Judgments, by the nonprofit organisation Right to Equality, will be shared with MPs on Tuesday at an event in parliament.<\/p>\n
Its analysis of 91 published family law judgments in England and Wales found \u201cwidespread and concerning evidence of victim-blaming language and attitudes \u2013 often directed towards mothers\u201d.<\/p>\n
It found that 72.5% of all judgments contained at least one instance of judicial victim\u2011blaming, and also evidence of gender bias, with \u201cmothers\u2019 behaviour scrutinised intensely while the fathers\u2019 conduct was contextualised or minimised\u201d.<\/p>\n
Across the 91 judgments, 66 contained victim-blaming language, with 530 instances of victim\u2011blaming in total made by court professionals, primarily judges.<\/p>\n
The report\u2019s authors expressed concern the data suggested harmful attitudes could influence judicial decision\u2011making, \u201cincluding reliance on rape myths, stereotyping, or overt scepticism toward mothers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Rose*, who has been in and out of family court since 2014, said she \u201cabsolutely, without a doubt\u201d felt she had been treated differently because of her gender, while her ex-partner \u201cwasn\u2019t scrutinised at all\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was allowed to sort of laugh and scoff and mock while we were in court, so he wasn\u2019t in any way held to account for the behaviours that he exhibited,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cafcass [Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service] barrister said that my ex-partner should be praised for how he handled himself and conducted himself in the hearings, which is just beyond a joke. They\u2019ve made findings of child abuse and rape, and then he\u2019s to be praised for how he\u2019s conducted himself is beyond belief.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cSo the standards are entirely different, but it\u2019s embedded throughout. It\u2019s not just the judiciary; <\/em>it\u2019s embedded throughout all of the agencies that are associated with the family court.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>There\u2019s this false view that women, and mothers especially, get anything that they want in the family court \u2013 they get all the money, they get all their kids\u2019 time, they get everything they like \u2013 and it couldn\u2019t be any further from the truth.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Another woman, Marie*, said: \u201cThe whole culture is victim-blaming. We\u2019ve just been treated completely differently, actually. My whole experience has just been that my ex has just used it as a weapon, and it\u2019s been a very effective weapon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n She added: \u201cThe judiciary, it\u2019s just \u2026 stuck. They still mark their own homework, and you get judges making decisions in an absolute void.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no reflective feedback, there\u2019s no learning from the decisions they\u2019re making, so they\u2019re never going to improve. So somebody that\u2019s getting it wrong is just going to carry on getting it wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n The report has put forward a number of recommendations, including that the family judiciary should publish 20% of their judgments, randomly selected each month, with specific targets for judgments in which domestic and sexual abuse is raised. It also recommends judges receive mandatory training in <\/strong>gender bias and victim-blaming, <\/strong>and that the potential use of AI tools to identify bias and victim-blaming in family courts should be explored.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a barrister, I have stood in family courts and watched judges normalise abuse, trivialise trauma and silence survivors,\u201d Dr Charlotte Proudman, a co-director of Right to Equality, said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis report gives voice to what victims have been telling us for decades: bias is real, it is embedded in the family justice system, and it is shaping decisions that affect children\u2019s safety, resulting in irreparable harm.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirith Entwistle, the MP for Bolton North East, who is supporting the report and sponsoring the launch, said: \u201cToo many women have told me that the family courts felt like an extension of the abuse that they were trying to escape.<\/p>\n \u201cThe persistent and routine undermining of victim-survivors found in published judgments demonstrates why victims of abuse have such low confidence in being treated fairly in our family justice system.<\/p>\n \u201cBias distracts judges from properly assessing risk, their obligation to safeguard, and putting the needs of the children first. It is essential that this is tackled head on with transparency, strong accountability, and training.\u201d<\/p>\n *Names have been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A report has found \u201cwidespread and concerning evidence\u201d of bias and victim-blaming in the family courts \u2013 primarily disadvantaging women. The report, Scratching the Surface: Victim-Blaming and Bias in Family Court Judgments, by the nonprofit organisation Right to Equality, will be shared with MPs on Tuesday at an event in parliament. Its analysis of 91<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[15935,569,2906,189,4170,175,293,241,24722,7139],"class_list":{"0":"post-50171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-bias","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-family","11":"tag-finds","12":"tag-gender","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-report","15":"tag-show","16":"tag-victimblaming","17":"tag-widespread"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}