Mother recounts custody hearings that split her children and vilified her

A journalist who fought for her children in UK family courts during the pandemic says the process left her siblings split between parents and herself vilified in court. She describes hearings in plain municipal rooms in Oxford and East London where legal cross‑examination and expert reports decided who the children would live with.

She says she began representing herself, only to find she was judged not just as a parent but as a woman, enduring barristers’ insinuating questioning and a culture that treats maternal care as suspect. Drawing parallels with historical cases, she recounts losing her son to his father while her daughter remained mainly with her, and encountering the modern use of concepts such as “parental alienation” — coined in 1985 by Richard A.

Gardner — which she says now reappears in expert reports by unregulated psychologists. She gives detailed examples from cases she observed. In one, a well‑paid father and a mother who had worked as a sex worker contested care for their daughter “Lana”; the court accepted expert evidence against the mother, restricted her parental responsibility and ordered the child to see her for four nights a fortnight.

In another long‑running matter over adolescents called Esther and Ada, the court‑appointed expert Trish Barry‑Relph recommended major changes, and an earlier high‑court hearing in 2023, Mrs Justice Lieven found that alienation allegations had been unhelpful while criticising some expert conduct.

Key Topics

Culture, Family Courts, Oxford, East London, Parental Alienation, Richard A. Gardner