\n<\/p>\n
O<\/span>n the afternoon that Sarah\u2019s daughters were taken away from her, they had been due to go to a paddling-pool party. It was July 2020 and, with the easing of lockdown restrictions in England, the girls \u2013 then nine and six \u2013 were excited about seeing their friends again after months apart. Sarah had just bought them matching swimsuits: blue with sequin unicorns.<\/p>\n But the girls never made it to the party. Three days before, Sarah had received a call from her solicitor. <\/strong>\u201cI could not comprehend what I was hearing,\u201d she says. \u201cMy legs started shaking.\u201d Her solicitor explained that she had been called a \u201cnarcissist\u201d in evidence presented to the family court, which claimed she was an immediate danger to herself and her children. Both of her girls could be removed from her with immediate effect.<\/p>\n \u201cI kept saying to him: \u2018It makes no sense.\u2019\u201d Sarah had committed no crime. Her children\u2019s social workers, teachers and other professionals with whom they were in contact had seen no problem with her parenting. The girls had spent lockdown with their mother \u201cdoing maths and fishing for tadpoles. They were safe and happy.\u201d<\/p>\n The person who had \u201cdiagnosed\u201d Sarah was an unregulated psychologist, Melanie Gill, whom at one point the judge wrongly referred to as \u201cDr\u201d, although she had never attained any qualifications that merit that title. Gill has a third-class degree in psychology and a diploma in child forensic studies, which she was awarded instead of a master\u2019s degree because she did not finish her dissertation.<\/p>\n Sarah attended an urgent court hearing via a video call on the morning of the party. It lasted 50 minutes. On the basis of Gill\u2019s evidence, the judge told her that her daughters would have to live with their father and that she had two hours to get them ready to leave. Instead of the paddling pool that afternoon, she told them they would be going on a \u201ctwo-week holiday with Daddy\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Melanie Gill in October 2022. <\/span> Photograph: James Manning\/PA<\/p>\n When their father arrived, the children refused to go with him. \u201cThe girls were clinging to me and had to be dragged off kicking and screaming. All the neighbours came out to see what was happening.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd just like that, I lost my girls.\u201d<\/p>\n That was more than six years ago. Apart from two brief occasions, Sarah has not seen her daughters unsupervised since. Most of the contact has happened fortnightly in public places such as hotel lounges. She has missed birthdays, first boyfriends and academic achievements. She wasn\u2019t consulted when it came to choosing secondary schools or GCSE options. No one told her when one of her daughters received hospital treatment. \u201c<\/em>I\u2019ve effectively been stripped of all parental responsibility,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Fighting this has cost her \u00a385,000 in legal bills. Her share of the cost of supervised contact with her daughters has reached \u00a313,000. She is close to bankruptcy. And still she is asking how one unregulated court expert using a theory that official guidance in England and Wales now says is a \u201charmful pseudo-science\u201d could wield so much power over her life.<\/p>\n S<\/span>arah was a teenager when she and her ex got together. \u201cHe was the first person I\u2019d ever loved,\u201d she says. They were happy at first, but Sarah says he was controlling and prone to angry outbursts. \u201cIt was my first sexual relationship and I didn\u2019t understand it was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n They married and had children, then she left her job to care for them. After this, she says, he took increasing control of their finances.<\/p>\n By 2018, the couple\u2019s marital disputes had escalated. The police had been called to their address several times and Sarah was becoming increasingly depressed. After she took an accidental overdose and was admitted to hospital, a referral was made to social services, who recorded that the children had witnessed domestic abuse and were showing signs of anxiety.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was furious with me that social services were involved,\u201d she says. While they were still living together, Sarah\u2019s ex made an application to the family court to try to stop her from taking the children.<\/p>\n She says that the abuse escalated and she fled the family home with her daughters under police escort. Sarah had reported the allegations of abuse against him and later secured a non-molestation order (a type of protective order) from the family court. In response, Sarah\u2019s ex claimed that she had tried to kill herself (which she denies, supported by hospital records) and that she was \u201calienating\u201d the children from him. In one statement, he wrote: \u201cI\u2019m being prevented from seeing them even though I\u2019m a hands-on dad.\u201d<\/p>\n In July <\/strong>2018, a district judge in the family court made limited findings against both parents. They included that Sarah had slapped her ex, thrown things at him, shouted and sworn at him and sent him abusive texts. The judge accepted, too, that her ex had been \u201cnasty\u201d and \u201cintimidating\u201d <\/em>and had \u201cinadvertently\u201d trapped Sarah\u2019s arm in a door. A court order was made for the children to share their time equally between the parents.<\/p>\n A few months later, however, the girls appeared to be struggling. Sarah\u2019s elder daughter told her GP that her father had smacked her on the bottom and she complained of recurring abdominal pains. Court papers state that the elder daughter later told teachers, social workers and her GP that she and her sister were sent outside by their father in the \u201ccold and dark\u201d and that they took shelter in a wendy house for a while before sneaking back inside.<\/p>\n The next day, according to court papers, the younger daughter recorded a video while hiding under her bed covers. In the audio, her sister and her father could be heard arguing. The elder daughter later reported to her teacher and GP that, during the row, her father had thrown her around, causing her to hit her head and chest, leaving a bruise. The children\u2019s school contacted social services. The girls refused to see their father for eight weeks.<\/p>\n Sarah, meanwhile, made an application to change the shared care order and the girls\u2019 contact with their father was suspended by the court. In April 2019, a social worker fed back to the court that the children were sometimes <\/em>\u201cscared when with their father\u201d.<\/p>\n Her ex responded by applying for sole custody. He claimed Sarah had been influencing the girls to express negative views about him and that his elder daughter was lying. The court requested that the local authority prepare an independent report. The social worker who wrote the report recommended the children live with their mother and see their father regularly, including on alternate weekends. The social worker said she saw nothing to suggest the girls were being influenced by their mother. She wrote of Sarah\u2019s elder daughter: \u201cThis is not the behaviour of a child who has been influenced by a parent.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah\u2019s ex objected to the report and said he wanted a second opinion from a psychologist. The judge agreed, saying that the social worker had not been trained in \u201cparental alienation\u201d since 2010. Since that time, he said, things had \u201csignificantly moved on\u201d.<\/p>\n double quotation markFighting this has cost Sarah \u00a385,000 in legal bills. Her share of the cost of supervised contact has reached \u00a313,000. She is close to bankruptcy<\/p>\n They certainly had. Parental alienation syndrome was a concept created in 1985 by the New York psychiatrist Richard Gardner. It was based on the theory that a parent can brainwash a child to turn them against the other parent, leading the child to wrongly believe they are being abused. The theory was widely rejected for lacking scientific credibility and by the mid-1990s had begun to fall out of use.<\/p>\n By the 2000s, however, it had resurfaced and the idea of \u201cparental alienation\u201d gained traction as a litigation tactic in the family courts \u2013 to much concern. In April 2023, a UN report called parental alienation a \u201cpseudo-concept\u201d weaponised by abusers to discredit abuse claims. The NSPCC has also issued warnings about the concept, while the UK government has said it \u201cdoes not recognise \u2018parental alienation syndrome\u2019 as a diagnosable condition\u201d.<\/p>\n Gill is one of the fiercest proponents of \u201cparental alienation\u201d. By her own estimate, she has given evidence in family courts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland <\/em>\u201cprobably 150 to 200 times\u201d over the past 15 years. During that time, she has given evidence that has been pivotal in the removal of at least a dozen children from their mothers, according to an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). This includes cases where fathers had been found by the court to be coercive and controlling or to have engaged in domestic abuse. It was Gill whom Sarah\u2019s ex asked for a second opinion.<\/p>\n Sarah had her concerns: \u201cI had seen something that connected her to a fathers\u2019 rights group. My instincts were that there could be some kind of bias.\u201d She wasn\u2019t aware at the time that Gill wasn\u2019t registered with any regulatory body. \u201cOf course, I would have objected on those grounds had I known.\u201d Instead, she says her lawyers told her it would serve her case to be amenable. \u201cI was given the impression the judge didn\u2019t like me and I should not complain,\u201d Sarah says. \u201cNot for one second did I imagine how badly it could go.\u201d<\/p>\n Expert witness psychologists can hold significant power and influence in the family courts in England and Wales. They are duty-bound to act impartially and, since the rules were tightened by law in July, should be registered with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council. However, before July, judges could appoint whomever they wished. Gill, who describes herself as \u201can attachment specialist, psychologist and forensic consultant\u201d working \u201cexclusively as an expert witness\u201d, was appointed in September 2019 to make an assessment of Sarah\u2019s family and was paid \u00a310,688 to do so.<\/p>\n Her views have troubled others working in the field. Dr Jaime Craig, a consultant clinical psychologist and the chair of the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK, believes Gill has an assessment process that assumes \u201cthere\u2019s no such thing as domestic abuse\u201d. Gill rejects mainstream clinical psychology and has described her own approach using \u201cattachment science\u201d as being able to \u201cget to the truth of what happened in the past\u201d.<\/p>\n Gill did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson previously told TBIJ that she was well qualified to perform the role of expert witness and had years of specialist training.<\/p>\n In a 2023 case, she told a court: \u201cI have been challenged and questioned on my qualifications in every single private law case I have ever undertaken and I have never been criticised.\u201d Gill claims to be the victim of a \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d and her supporters say she has been unfairly hounded by the media and \u201cradical feminists\u201d.<\/p>\n Sarah says her assessment process with Gill was \u201cconfusing and difficult\u201d. \u201cShe asked whether I\u2019d ever experienced abuse, so I opened up about some of my father\u2019s behaviours towards me \u2013 and my ex-husband\u2019s,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Sarah has fond memories of her father from when she was a young child. While he later became abusive, her mother was always a protective figure. \u201cDespite being subjected to abuse from my father at times, my mother was always a safe, steady, wholesome presence. I told Gill this, but she claimed I was neglected, which I was not in any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n Gill concluded that Sarah\u2019s \u201cnarcissism could make her prone to vengeful anger\u201d and went on to recommend \u201cschema therapy\u201d, which is commonly used to treat personality disorders, despite Sarah having never been diagnosed with one. Gill also said there was extensive evidence the children were being alienated from their father by Sarah. There was no mention in Gill\u2019s report of the 2018 court findings of abuse, or the elder child\u2019s specific allegations against her father.<\/p>\n Gill recommended that, in order to safeguard the girls, they should live with their father and receive therapy. After this, Sarah did not see her children for four and a half months.<\/p>\n A<\/span>s family court proceedings are held in private and speaking about them could be in contempt of court, Sarah was not even allowed to explain to close friends why her children were no longer with her. She was, she says, \u201ceffectively gagged\u201d.<\/p>\n Sarah is keen to point out that although there were periods where her children refused to see their dad, they always wanted a relationship with him. \u201cThey were not alienated; they just didn\u2019t want to live with him,\u201d she says. \u201cI have now become the victim of precisely what I was accused of.\u201d<\/p>\n In August 2020, the decision that the children should live with their father was made permanent at a review hearing. Gill wrote a second report and told the court that the children\u2019s attachment to their mother resulted in them \u201cpresenting negative information to her and others to align themselves with her views\u201d.<\/p>\n She said the social worker, the GP, the school and other professionals to whom the children had made negative reports about their father would not have seen these \u201cattachment issues\u201d as \u201cthey cannot be identified just by looking at what is happening on the surface\u201d.<\/p>\n She said Sarah\u2019s contact should not progress to unsupervised until she had undertaken schema therapy, which is not widely <\/strong>available on the NHS, costs anywhere from \u00a380 to \u00a3200 an hour for private treatment and can take \u201cup to two years\u201d.<\/p>\n Giving evidence, the social worker tasked with writing an independent safeguarding report said, despite Gill\u2019s recommendations, there was \u201cinsufficient evidence\u201d to \u201cdeny the children contact\u201d with their mother. But the judge found the social worker\u2019s evidence was lacking in the area of \u201cattachment issues\u201d. By contrast, he found Gill\u2019s evidence to be \u201ccompelling\u201d and said the picture she painted of the mother fitted \u201centirely\u201d with his view of her.<\/p>\n In her own evidence, Sarah said Gill\u2019s recommendations had gone against the view of all the other professionals who had dealt with the family. She said she did not agree schema therapy was appropriate for her, as she had not been diagnosed with a personality disorder.<\/p>\n She questioned Gill\u2019s expert status and mentioned her links to a fathers\u2019 rights group. The judge said these criticisms \u201csmack[ed] of desperation\u201d and that Gill\u2019s CV was \u201cimpressive\u201d. Sarah\u2019s evidence, he said, was seeking to \u201cportray herself entirely the victim\u201d. Meanwhile, he described the father as \u201cwilling to learn\u201d and \u201cwholly child-focused\u201d.<\/p>\n Sarah\u2019s ex did not reply to requests for comment. Previously, he rebutted all the allegations made against him and said that he cooperated throughout court proceedings at a \u201cconsiderable personal, emotional and financial cost, and with the children\u2019s welfare and best interests at the forefront of my mind and decision-making\u201d.<\/p>\n In court, the judge acknowledged that removing the children from their mother was a \u201cdraconian step\u201d taken with \u201csome considerable misgivings\u201d. But he added: \u201cThe decision was \u2026 based entirely on the expert recommendation and nothing is before the court today to suggest that decision was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n S<\/span>arah\u2019s face lights up when she talks about her daughters. She describes them as sweet, funny, kind little girls \u2013 even though her elder is now taller than she is. During previous supervised visits, they talked fondly of school friends Sarah has never met. <\/em><\/p>\n The elder is creative and crochets toys and bags. When they still lived together, she would ask Sarah to choose her clothes, but now she is finding her own style. \u201cShe\u2019s enjoying cutting up her T-shirts and being an individual,\u201d she says. Her younger sister, meanwhile, loves Taylor Swift and the colour pink.<\/p>\n After the children were taken away, Sarah clung on to the home she had occupied with her daughters after leaving her marriage. \u201cIt had been a sanctuary for us,\u201d she says. \u201cIf they came back, I wanted it to be familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n When she got home after her daughters were taken away, it felt as if they had died, she says. They had left in a hurry and their toys were exactly as they had left them. \u201cThat\u2019s where they stayed for years,\u201d she says, describing the lounge littered with Lego constructions and collections of feathers, shells and pebbles. In the sisters\u2019 bedroom, Sylvanian Family characters were set up as part of a classroom scene. A cupboard had been converted into a doll\u2019s house. One day, Sarah opened it to find a miniature dolly tucked up in bed.<\/p>\n The contact she has had with her children feels far from home. It takes place under the eye of a supervisor, who writes down everything that is said. The contact notes are kept and could later be produced as evidence if required by the court. \u201cThe implicit message is that I\u2019m a danger,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cWe can\u2019t even go to the toilets without the supervisor.\u201d<\/p>\n On one such loo trip, her elder took the opportunity to whisper that she had started her period. \u201cShe clearly didn\u2019t want her sister to hear, so all I could do in response was to give her a hug,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cShe was deprived of the intimacy of that mother-daughter moment. So I went home and wrote her a letter telling her about my own experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markGill claims to be the victim of a \u2018witch-hunt\u2019 and her supporters say she has been unfairly hounded by the media and \u2018radical feminists\u2019<\/p>\n In the end, Sarah did not send the letter. She did not want the details of her own first period to be read by the court and her ex, as every card, gift or piece of correspondence had to go through him for approval. Later, she was upset to learn that her daughters were self-harming.<\/p>\n There may now be hope for Sarah. In December 2024, the Family Justice Council (FJC), an advisory body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, published official guidance that said court-appointed experts should be regulated and should not be asked to look for \u201cparental alienation\u201d, which cannot be diagnosed and which the FJC considers \u201charmful pseudo-science\u201d. Instead, judges should identify any \u201calienating behaviours\u201d as factual matters, but only after ruling out domestic abuse.<\/p>\n Then, in a high court ruling in July 2025, a senior judge acknowledged that there were \u201cconcerns\u201d about Gill and ruled that the findings in Sarah\u2019s case, based on Gill\u2019s evidence, lacked a \u201csolid foundation\u201d. The judge added that \u201cwhat the [district] judge expressed to be findings based on Ms Gill\u2019s assessment should not stand as such in any further assessment\u201d and that Gill\u2019s use of \u201cattachment science \u2026 makes it very difficult to retain any of what she says as a base for future decision-making\u201d. The judge said there should be \u201can investigation about the current situation so as to inform \u2026 what sort of relationship \u2026 the children can have with their mother in the light of their own best interests, wishes and feelings\u201d.<\/p>\n It was a watershed moment, not only for Sarah, but also for other mothers who believe their children have been unjustly removed on the advice of Gill. A transparency order issued by the family court means Sarah can finally talk publicly \u2013 albeit under a pseudonym \u2013 about her ordeal for the first time.<\/p>\n Since Sarah\u2019s successful legal challenge, another mother has been vindicated after getting Gill\u2019s evidence overturned on similar grounds. In February, the then president of the family division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, issued \u201cfirm guidance\u201d around court experts that said courts should no longer use unregulated experts. On 20 July, rules barring unregulated psychologists such as Gill from family courts in England and Wales (unless in exceptional circumstances) came into force.<\/p>\n However, for families such as Sarah\u2019s, the damage has already been done.<\/p>\n Sarah hopes her years of \u201cliving in limbo\u201d may soon come to an end. But despite having Gill\u2019s evidence overturned, it has not proved so simple. She should now be allowed to return to a full relationship with her daughters. However, her girls have said they want the supported contact to continue. Sarah fears that therapy provided to the girls on Gill\u2019s recommendation has reinforced the notion that she is a danger to them.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir trust in me appears to have been destroyed by whatever they have been told in line with the Gill narrative,\u201d says Sarah. She has seen disclosures from the girls\u2019 schools showing that they were told she was \u201cmentally unwell\u201d and \u201chigh risk\u201d.<\/p>\n At a hearing in April, an officer from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, who had assessed the girls, told the court he supported their request for continued supervised contact, even though there were no safeguarding concerns. He confirmed that they had not been told the truth about why they were removed, nor that their removal from Sarah was based on flawed expert evidence, since overturned by the high court.<\/p>\n Sarah\u2019s barrister <\/strong>challenged his report and successfully argued that a new properly trained and regulated psychologist should be brought in to deal with the complex and delicate situation. \u201cThey need to know the truth, because their perception of me is based on a lie,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cFor all intents and purposes, my motherhood ended the day their father took them away. I will never get back the lost time with my daughters.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I\u2019ve been at rock bottom,\u201d Sarah <\/strong>continues. \u201cThere have been times when I knew if I spoke out I\u2019d be further punished \u2013 maybe lose them completely \u2026 But I wasn\u2019t going to let this be a self-fulfilling prophecy; I didn\u2019t want to give any credence to Gill\u2019s theories.<\/p>\n \u201cAll I want now is a chance of a future as a family, rather than the strangers we\u2019ve become.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah is a pseudonym<\/em><\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the afternoon that Sarah\u2019s daughters were taken away from her, they had been due to go to a paddling-pool party. It was July 2020 and, with the easing of lockdown restrictions in England, the girls \u2013 then nine and six \u2013 were excited about seeing their friends again after months apart. Sarah had just<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[837,681,569,2906,3919,1575,96,4611,3033],"class_list":{"0":"post-52351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-betrayed","9":"tag-child","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-family","12":"tag-feels","13":"tag-girls","14":"tag-lost","15":"tag-mother","16":"tag-protection"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52351","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=52351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}