Domestic Abuse Victims in Family Law Courts

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I would very much like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), whose powerful testimony really set the context of this debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and Women’s Aid for its tireless work in championing the rights of domestic abuse victims.

The basis for this debate is the findings of the Women’s Aid report, which are very disturbing indeed. The Government and the judiciary have to listen and act. Every single recommendation in the report needs to be considered. Further child deaths, such as those in the tragic case that we have just heard about, have to be prevented. The courts need to challenge themselves on their attitudes, their culture, and their practices in all domestic violence cases. We have to be clear that priority should be given to tackling domestic abuse. I think that the Government feel that it is a priority—and they have not only spoken, but acted. Coercive control is now an offence under the Serious Crime Act 2015. It is important that, as is recommended in the report, all members of the family court, the judiciary and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service have specialist training so that they understand the reality of what that new law means.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that sometimes family courts mistake fathers’ persistence over access, and their going through the courts time and again, for their taking an interest in their children, when it is intimidation and bullying of their former partner? Frighteningly, in my constituency, I have had a CAFCASS worker tell children who were afraid of their father and did not want to visit him that if they did not go, their mother would be in deep trouble, so they had to go and see him. That is shocking behaviour from any professional.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, and she is right to pick up on the complexities of coercive control. None of us should underestimate how difficult it will be for professionals truly to understand the complexities of this behaviour, but understand it they must if we are to make sure that the law is put into practice.

The House has thought long and hard about the other ways in which the Government have shown their commitment to tackling domestic violence. In particular, the Government have supported the Istanbul convention, which sets out a clear commitment to tackling domestic violence through legislation, training, and awareness-raising campaigns such as “This is abuse”. I applaud them for signing up to the convention, but when he responds, will the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), clarify when the Istanbul convention will be ratified—not just by the UK, but by other countries, such as Germany, Norway and Ireland, which, although signatories, are not ratifying the treaty? That would be an important statement of the fact that combating violence against women and domestic violence needs to be on all Governments’ agendas. We need that ratification as a way of making sure that that message is sent out, both to members of the Council of Europe and to non-members.

To tackle domestic abuse, we need victims to feel confident in our legal system, and confident that reports made will be successfully taken forward to prosecution. Those who have been abused should feel safe in making those reports. That is why I want to make two points. The first is that the Government need to be clear, and perhaps reiterate in this debate, that they support legal aid remaining in place for victims of domestic abuse and child abuse. Perhaps the Minister can update us on the Government’s work in that area, and particularly around the domestic violence gateway, which requires victims to provide objective evidence of abuse to qualify for legal aid. Ministers have made their intentions clear, in terms of the support that should be there, but in practice, some women have found it difficult to get the prescribed forms of evidence that are required in order to access the gateway. The Ministry of Justice has a review of the domestic violence gateway under way. Perhaps the Minister can say a little bit more about where we are with that review, which was urgently needed.

The all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, of which I am vice-chair and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) is chair, has looked at the impact of court proceedings on women and children. I draw the House’s attention to our recent report, which followed a number of parliamentary hearings in which we heard from expert witnesses and individuals with personal experience of the family court system. We heard in evidence that more victims—not just women but children—are now being cross-examined by perpetrators of abuse in family court proceedings. Women’s Aid estimates that one in four women are directly questioned by a perpetrator, and the same can happen to children.

Victims should be protected when giving evidence in court. Few Members in this place can be content to see alleged abusers cross-examine those affected by domestic violence. This has to be re-examined urgently. We need to put an end to survivors of domestic abuse being cross-examined by their alleged abusers in court.

My second point is on special measures, which have already been mentioned in an intervention. In our all-party parliamentary group hearings, we heard evidence about the traumatic impact on survivors of domestic abuse of coming face to face with the perpetrator in court, yet half of all women who experience domestic violence and use the family court system have no specific protection measures available to them when they attend court. As a result, more than one in three have been verbally or physically abused by their former partner in court buildings. I find those figures shocking, given the nature of the crimes and the situations that we are talking about.

I welcome today’s announcement by my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor of additional support for vulnerable witnesses. My understanding is that victims of domestic abuse are treated as vulnerable witnesses. I hope that the Under-Secretary will confirm that those very welcome announcements will cover those who have suffered domestic abuse and violence. Specifically, an increase has been announced in the number of locations where victims and witnesses can give evidence remotely. Even more welcome are the measures allowing the pre-recording of evidence from 2017. Those measures are a real step forward, but we need to make sure that they are available not just to some victims, but to all. I am sure that Members of the House would want those reassurances today, because we need all the family courts to give witnesses and victims the support that they need. Two other important special measures in family courts are the ability to give victims and witnesses separate waiting rooms, and their ability to leave the court by separate exits. That is particularly vital for women living in refuges.

It is clear that family courts are regularly not protecting women and children in the way that we all want them to, and the way that the Government want them to. We need an end to the cross-examination of survivors of domestic violence by their alleged abusers. We need assurances that special measures will routinely be available in family court proceedings.

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[Jess Phillips]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Actually, in this place, we have some reasons to be really proud of the efforts that have been made by successive Governments, year in, year out. The laws in this country are relatively good when it comes to domestic violence. Where we fail, time and again, is in how we implement those laws. We do not need to look much further than very many reports assessing how the police handle cases of domestic violence to see that we need to do more. Sometimes, in this place, we make up laws that open an enormous door into an empty room. That is a problem for victims.

I want to say something to the victims who may be watching this. Lots of them have been in touch with me to say that they want their stories to be told and heard. The most important message, which I am sure that everybody in this place wants to say and which victims of domestic and sexual violence rarely hear, is, “We believe you.” If every single one of us could tell everybody to stand up and say those three words—“We believe you”—we could change things for victims of domestic violence, who are frequently disbelieved by every agency they are put in front of.

The second reason this debate is so important is to educate ourselves as legislators. My hon. and very dear Friend the Member for Hove and I have chatted about this subject many times over the past six months. On many occasions, he has bounded up to me and said that he has been stunned by a case that he has, as though it is the worst case in the whole world. I am sure that he will give voice to some examples of those very shocking stories. He is always so shocked, horrified and angry about every case. For me, these cases have become more expected. My years of working with victims of violence have in many ways numbed me to some of them—although I am only human.

[Mrs Moon]

My hon. Friend talks about her years of working with victims of domestic violence. I, too, worked in that field, and one of the things that I found most frightening was that courts tend to think of domestic violence only in terms of bruises or injury. “The Archers” has been brilliant at showing the impact of coercive and abusive behaviour, but there is an incredible naivety in believing that coercive and abusive behaviour to mothers would not also happen to children. If legal aid were available, it would be huge help to those women in protecting themselves.

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more. I will come on to the legal aid issues in a minute.

The Government have tried, through the law, to address coercive control, but we are not far enough down the line with that legislation to see whether it can deal with something so complex. To me, it is actually not that complex. We are always making the excuse that it is difficult to understand, but I do not find it difficult, so I am not sure why I am constantly cutting everybody some slack on this. We should be able to understand the constant gaslighting that goes on. “The Archers” has definitely achieved something. In the case of Henry, the small boy in “The Archers”, there is no doubt that that child has been coerced and controlled. It is harrowing; I feel chills even thinking about it.

Going back to my lovely hon. Friend the Member for Hove, on one occasion he ran up to me and said, “Jess, I just don’t understand why people are still walking around in the street. How can they carry on with their lives when this is happening? Why are they not screaming out about the awful family court system?” Today, in this place, we have a chance to help colleagues, and, most importantly, Government Members, to see what we—all of us as a country—are sanctioning in our court system. Here, in this place, we have the power and agency to change this, for every victim in the country and especially for all the victims whose children have died. We must use our agency to do what they would do in a heartbeat if they were any near as privileged as every single one of us.

On our agency to change this, I turn to the report of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, in conjunction with the report from Women’s Aid cited in the motion. I ask the Minister to give us some assurances about what we are going to do about this. I love warm words—I say them myself—but I want hard actions. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke and I had attempted to begin this conversation with the previous Justice Secretary. However, politics is a fickle game, and so it now falls to a fresh Justice Secretary to make her mark on the job.

It is important to state that we could be considered to be breaking the law on these issues in the UK. As a member—for now—of the European Union, we signed up to specific directives on protecting victims. One directive explicitly states that we must uphold the protection of victims within our court system and contact with offenders must be avoided. For example, all new court buildings that are built—chance would be a fine thing at the moment—must have separate waiting areas. Every day in the UK, we are breaching that law. We will hear today about victims who are not just in the same waiting area but are allowed to be cross-examined, even bullied, by the very people who have abused them for years. In the criminal courts, this would be considered a severe breach of human rights. It would also completely fly in the face of the “achieving best evidence” standards, and most likely the evidence would be thrown out.

For years, people in this place, before they came here, campaigned to have children taken into video rooms. We got partitions and separate waiting rooms: those things have all happened. A quarter of the women surveyed by Women’s Aid were found to have been directly cross-examined in the family courts by their abuser. This is increasing as a direct result of the cessation of legal aid and the rising number of citizens acting as litigants in person. When, a number of months ago, I asked the Justice Department for figures on the number of litigants in person in the civil and family courts, I was told that it does not monitor that information. Might I gently suggest to Ministers—I am in a good mood because they have done something good today—that that is simply not good enough. We have to look at the trends in what is happening in our courts.

There is a pervasive myth that family courts are unfairly biased towards mothers. I think we will hear today all sorts of examples of why that is not the case. It does not matter how many times people scale buildings dressed as Spider-Man—women are still badly treated in our family courts system. This is especially pertinent with regard to those with a history of domestic violence. The domestic violence APPG inquiry found that there is no evidence to suggest that women are favoured. On average, only 1% of applicants to family courts have access refused: only 1% are told that they can no longer see their children. Seventy per cent. of all cases in front of the family courts are victims of domestic violence. So, in 1% of 70% of all cases, people are told that they cannot see their children. In three quarters of cases where courts have ordered contact with an abusive parent, children suffer further abuse. Some children have even been ordered to have contact with a parent who has committed offences against the children themselves. As we have heard, children have even been killed as a result of residency arrangements.

I want to stress that an abusive partner can force a victim into the family court, or in fact any civil court in the UK, as many times as they like. This is not a judgment that they get handed down, their case falls, and then they do not get another bite at the cherry—they can go to court as many times as they like. They can chase a woman around the country making the same claim against her, and nothing will stop that. There is no doubt that in many cases violent perpetrators use the family court system not to get their children back but to continue stalking and continue a reign of terror.

The domestic violence APPG has seven recommendations that would dramatically improve the lives of women. They fall almost exclusively in line with the report from Women’s Aid. We want to see victims and children protected and respected in our courts—at the very least to the same level that we have in our criminal courts. I have a copy of the recommendations that I can hand over to Ministers today. I really hope that they will listen to what they are hearing and act, as some of their colleagues have today, to do the right thing.

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[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

May I join the chorus of approval and gratitude expressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for securing this debate? Not only did she give a voice so effectively to a family who so desperately wanted that to be done, but she set a tone for this debate that is very much appreciated by all of us following her. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who spoke brilliantly. She joined in making a pitch for this debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who was present for the pitch for this debate. As a member of the Backbench Business Committee, she could not join in with it, but I could tell from her unrestrained facial expressions that she was offering support in many other ways during the process. Those Members and others in the Chamber today have championed victims of domestic abuse in Parliament, in Government and on the front line respectively. Together, they bring a wealth of advocacy experience to this debate.

I must admit, with some shame, that I came to realise the true brutal horror of domestic violence only relatively recently, when I became a Member of Parliament. Shortly after the election last year, I was in my office sifting through the rubble of my campaign, when a women walked in and asked if I was her new Member of Parliament. When I said yes, she told me that she had just fled her partner, after suffering the latest in a long series of very brutal attacks. She sat, bruised and shaking, and said that she was ready to move on, but that she needed help. She did not trust the police, so she had turned to me. That was my first experience of someone turning to me for help as an MP, and it was the first time I had sat down with a survivor of domestic abuse.

Since that time, I have got to know many women who have survived violent relationships, and I have tried my best to be the best advocate I can for them. It is through meeting and listening to survivors that I first came to understand how our family courts are being used to perpetuate abuse against extremely vulnerable women. Eighteen months ago, I did not know that a convicted criminal could represent himself and cross-examine the victims of his crimes over and over again by using the family courts. How could I get to this age and not know that? Why is it that so few people I talk to have the faintest idea this is going on daily in the British legal system?

One constituent I am in regular contact with has been cross-examined by her former partner on three separate occasions. The man who beat her, broke her bones, battered her unconscious and hospitalised her, and who was convicted for his crimes, still has the right to summon his victim to court for a spurious custody hearing. He will never win the case, but that is not the point—he is victorious the second he steps into the courtroom, because in that instant he gets exactly what he wants, which is to continue to inflict violence and abuse on a woman who has already suffered more than most of us could ever imagine.

[Mrs Moon]

Is it not important for the courts to understand that they are being manipulated in that way? The courts ought to record how often an abuser deliberately uses the courts to inflict further abuse. Concentrix should also be aware that when it receives reports of an unreported adult being in the home, it may well be the abuser carrying on the abuse by making false reports. It should take action to investigate that before it cuts off the benefits.

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. The fact that many of the men who inflict this violence are not only extremely manipulative, but extremely careful in the way they manipulate people and systems, means that far more effort should be put into understanding the victims, who can explain the type of behaviour the courts are dealing with. If we did that, a lot of heartbreak and violence would be avoided.

Another constituent told me that she was shaking so violently after a family court hearing that she had to be assisted to the taxi. Soon after leaving, the taxi had to stop to allow her to open a door and vomit.

Those of us who have not experienced it cannot comprehend the fear that survivors suffer. It is all-encompassing and ever present. The prospect of seeing the man who reigned with such terror causes paralysis. The faintest possibility that the abuser could get access to personal details—addresses, bank account numbers or even medical records—is overwhelming. What is most grotesque is that abusers know this. They know that the family courts can be used to torment their victims, and in some cases they do so with unrelenting brutality. When one listens to survivors describing their experiences of being summonsed, approaching the hearing date, being cross-examined by their abuser and dealing with the aftermath, one simple truth is inescapable: the language and vocabulary with which they describe their family court experience is identical to how they describe the violence they experienced in the relationship they bravely escaped.

It should shock everyone that the family courts are being used in a way that inflicts, not ends, violence against women. Worst of all, from the abuser’s perspective, it works. One constituent told me last month that she was dropping harassment charges because there was a good chance that her abuser would gain access to her mental health files because he had chosen to represent himself. She could not bear the thought of him reading, and being gratified by, such intimate and personal information. Another told me that she simply could not face another cross-examination by her convicted abuser. She had been medicated in order to endure her last experience, and the recovery from it took weeks. She told me that if he tried again, she would capitulate and give him whatever he demanded simply to avoid the experience. She said:

“I simply do not have it in me to survive another cross examination”.

If there is one example that sums up the sheer horror of abuse and its continuation in the family court, it is that of Jane Clough. Jane was in an abusive and violent relationship until she finally took action and went to the police. Her ex-partner, Jonathan Vass, appeared in court charged with nine counts of rape, one of sexual assault and three counts of common assault. Some of this had taken place while Jane was heavily pregnant with his child. Inexplicably, Judge Simon Newell decided that Vass was not a threat and freed him on bail.

Jane lived in so much fear that she moved in with her parents for comfort and protection. Vass eventually found out where Jane was working and, in July 2010, he attacked her as she headed home from work. He stabbed her 19 times and then slashed her throat—wounds from which she died. The next day, he was arrested approaching Jane’s parents’ home. He was on his way to murder either his baby child or Jane’s parents, or both.

I have had the honour of talking to Jane’s parents and sister. They are a family whose grace and dignity shine above the horror they have endured. However, there is more to this terrible episode and they are desperate for people to hear about it and learn from it. Once in prison, Vass began demanding parental rights over his child. This was the child whose mother he had beaten and murdered, and the child he would, in all likelihood, have murdered if only he had had the opportunity. None of us can imagine the pain this caused Jane’s family, but it gets worse still.

Jane’s sister began adoption proceedings in order to break the link with Vass. From that moment onwards, the family experienced a legal system that was stacked in his favour, rather than the baby he had tried to kill. Without access to financial support or legal aid, the family had to find separate representation for the baby and the rest of the family. Had a legal firm not donated pro bono representation, they would have had to sell their house to cover the costs.

A five-day hearing was scheduled in the family court, and the family were informed that Vass had exercised his right to self-representation. The man who had brutally murdered their sister and daughter would be cross-examining them. Jane’s sister told me that she simply cannot find the words to do justice to the brutalising effect this had on her as the court date approached. On the day of the hearing, they were informed that he would be appearing by video link, but they were stunned to discover that this was because of concerns for his safety and had nothing at all to do with the wellbeing of the family. As Jane’s sister told me,

“It was so shocking. It was all about him—what was best for him, how best to protect his rights. Nothing was balanced against our rights.”

During the cross-examination, Vass asked personal questions of the family members. He asked Jane’s sister, in reference to the baby,

“What will you tell her about me?”.

He asked her husband:

“What makes you think you can be a dad to my daughter?”.

The trauma meted out by the family court process is simply inhuman. This family had suffered enough.

The family have asked me to pass on their thanks to two advocates who have made a difference to them during and since these terrible events. The first is Dame Louise Casey who, as Victims Commissioner, learned from their experiences and took steps towards greater recognition for victims in the family court. The second is my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who joins us here today. As Director of Public Prosecutions, he got to know the family well and they speak in the highest possible terms of him and his advocacy for them.

Progress has been made, but it has been glacial. We have not seen the transformation that is desperately needed. The abuse and brutalisation of women and families is being perpetuated via our legal system. To abusers, the family court is simply another tool through which to extend their hate, their violence and their control of extremely vulnerable women—exactly the kind of people the state exists to protect. Every day that these practices are allowed to continue, shame is heaped on our system of justice, on this House and on our Government, because we have the power to stop this happening and yet it continues.