The Results of my Research at the Sharp End of Family Law & Domestic Abuse

Let me explain what you are about to read and how I have come to the conclusions. Almost two years ago I began helping my best friend go through Family Court, something that I had no knowledge of at the time. She had been a victim of domestic abuse, lots of it I had witness of, as she would text me straight after incidents. I told her to leave but she struggled due to the fact they had a new born baby. I recognised the signs in her as I had also been the victim of domestic abuse twice, once pbysical and once mental with financial abuse. Helping her helped me in a round about way, trying to turn a negative into something positive. As a male, I had undeniable evidence that domestic abuse could be a crime committed by any gender (it’s also rife in the LGBTQIA+ community). To cut a long story short, I then went on to do a couple of Level 3 (A Level equivalent) law courses, passing both criminal and family law exams with a Higher Distinction. I took my knowledge and became a qualified McKenzie Friend, volunteering on 44 cases in that 2 year period. I also produced 12 episodes of a podcast called Family Law — The Inside Story (also known as A Dark World), this podcast reached millions worldwide and is now a finalist in two prestigious Royal Awards categories. This had a knock on effect via social media, with a X (formally Twitter) account with nearly 4000 active followers, who are always around to answer a poll or put across their views. My followers are a mix of genders and races, there is no average type of follower. So using all of the above, I have been taking notes and stats in order to finally publish this report. I am sure the reaction to this report will be mixed, I know that it’ll annoy some and please others, but please bear in mind that this report is not necessarily my own beliefs, instead it is based on fact. So whether you agree or disagree, please try to steer clear of abusive responses. By all means give your opinions, but there is never an excuse to target anyone. Thank you in advance to those who choose to debate this report rather than get nasty.

What made me collate the information gained during my time working with people who’d gone through family court and more specifically with victims of domestic abuse? The answer is simple, I began to see patterns emerging, it became easier to tell the difference between a victim and someone pretending to be a victim, those pretending turned out to be perpetrators in a high number of occasions.

The link between family court and domestic abuse. It became apparent early on that there was a link between family court and domestic abuse, almost all of the cases I was involved with had allegations attached to them. You have to ask why, the answer took a tiny element of common sense, you’d have to be blind to miss it. If a relationship broke down for any other reason, those couples found a way to make child arrangements without the need for the intervention of a court. Look at my own circumstances, in the middle of the two relationships where I suffered domestic abuse, I had an 11 year marriage with 2 children, this marriage ended for different reasons and between us we managed to sort our own arrangements out, in fact we work well together for the sake of the children, in fact I had to take a break from writing this report to take a call from the children’s mum, she is off work poorly and my son needed to go to the dentist in an emergency, so I am going to pick him up and take him, something she would probably have done being that it wasn’t in my normal time. We can work together, something I could never have done if I had children with one of my abusive ex-partners. This neatly brings me to the first conclusion in this report; Almost all ex-partners who find themselves in family court, bring with it allegations of domestic abuse, because those where abuse was never a factor can usually work together for the good of the children.

The next part of this report looks at who perpetrators of abuse actually are. As you already know, I have been a victim twice, that is extremely unusual and very unlucky. I am a male who when you look at, you would imagine me being quite a strong man, able to handle himself. This much is true, but I vowed from an early age never to hit a woman, no matter what, it’s what my parents taught me and it’s something I'll continue to do until I go to my grave. So during the physically abusive relationship I allowed my drunk ex to come home from the bars and wake me up, always wanting sex whether I wanted it or not (mostly not), occasionally forcing me to, without getting graphic, I was hardly turned on by a woman who woke me from deep sleep, spat at me and punched me in the face for daring to say no, then literally stuffing an un-aroused me into her, then hurting me rather than pleasuring me, then would come the beatings, they were easily resolved in my favour but I just could not hit a woman no matter what. That’s enough about me because this article is about my findings over the last two years, I just wanted to show from the word go that men do get abused too, it is less talked about, but the fault of that lies with men as they think it’s a sign of weakness. I’m here to tell all abused men that you do not need to feel embarrassed to come forward.

Moving on to the actual subject matter, what is the split between men and women based on my experience over the last two years only? Well as I’ve said I can only count those whom I have had dealings with, and secondly I can only count those who I believe are telling me the truth. Just to clarify that I have refused to be a McKenzie Friend three times and pulled out of one case part way through, when I did not believe their stories. I have worked with a total of 43 people in the two years, the split of those who I worked for was 34 mothers, 8 fathers and 1 unrecorded gender. I do understand that some men never come forward but at the same time, if a father is going through the court process they may well have had no choice. At the time, I made it clear that I would work for any gender if they’ve been a victim of domestic abuse and were going through court. What do these figures tell me, firstly let me make it abundantly clear that my sample size of 43 is low, but it’s good enough to give you an idea of which way the wind is blowing. So if I was a statistician I would say the following; 79.1% of abused parents are mothers, 18.6% of abused parents are fathers and the rest are likely to be in the LGBTQIA+ community, around about 2.3%. It tells us that sadly many more women are abused, a statistic that has been floating around for years, in fact some studies show that 1 in 4 women are victims of domestic abuse, but we won’t pay much attention to that, because the figures that I can guarantee are my own, 79.1% of my clients/guests are abused mothers.

Next I want to cover probably the most controversial subject in family court, that is Parental Alienation. Before I talk about my own experiences with people I’ve worked with, let me cover my own personal belief, which is born out of my own experiences. Parental Alienation Syndrome was written by Richard Gardner back in the 1980's, is he someone you can trust? Do your own research and make up your own mind, me personally, I don’t think he had a clue what he was writing or the issues it would cause 40 years later. BUT I firmly believe that parental alienation does occur in some rare occasions, some parents do try to wipe the other parent out of the child’s life, sometimes with very subtle comments. So when this happens for real, it can often be ignored, and the fault for that lies with this next group of people I talk about. If you google stuff like ‘How to fight allegations of domestic abuse?’ it won’t take you long to find yourself reading websites suggesting that you claim the allegations are false and you should suggest that it’s being done to alienate you. A lot of these sites are built by groups who are campaigning on behalf of fathers who have had abuse allegations against them. These groups are all over the place now, it’s no longer just a lone father dressed as Batman on Buckingham Palace, now there are many groups available to join and get advice from. Every time someone starts to fight allegations of abuse with false claims of parental alienation, they are spoiling it for those few who are truly suffering alienation, as judges are (very slowly) getting wise to this sick practice. Why do I call it sick, well false allegations of any kind are sick, whether its for domestic abuse or parental alienation. What would I conclude from my time in Family Law? That whilst Parental Alienation does occur occasionally, the majority of these claims seem to follow allegations of domestic abuse, I would also say that the majority of claims are by men as I witnessed no accusations of parental alienation by women. In fact you can put many statements by made about parental alienation through plagiarism software and the thing lights up like Blackpool in the winter.

Next up is corruption in the Family Court. I’ve read many accounts of corruption in Family Court but in all honesty I never really believed any. I wrote them off as those who claimed corruption had been hard done by, maybe had a judge who was unbelievably biased. Proving corruption is difficult at the best of times, especially when you are accusing someone as high up as a district judge taking a bung to throw a case in your ex’s favour. So this was never going to be a paragraph in this report, that was until my final case upon retiring from my volunteer work. Something was off, something didn’t feel like the rest of my cases, it was odd, it wasn’t just the judgement, it was all about the constant smiling towards one side, it was the way in which the judge took a complete u-turn after a break in proceedings. Coming away from that hearing there was something inside me that said, “Investigate this further”, so I started to look around, finding the solicitor and the judge connected on LinkedIn, that’s not significant but what followed was incredible, I just can’t tell you about it in this article as investigations are ongoing. What I will say about corruption in Family Court, is that the majority of cases are fine, but watch out and be aware of anything that doesn’t feel quite right, perhaps a total switch during a break or something that seems out of place, a weird decision. Maybe they order regular drug tests on a parent, then come back and decide that they’re not needed all of a sudden. So corruption does occur, however, most of the time when a decision goes against you, and you believed in your case whole heartedly, it’s just exactly that, a case with a result you don’t like or agree with, but not corruption. But I cannot put my hand on my heart and say there isn’t corruption, because I know there is and that is an utter disgrace. If you are a judge, magistrate, legal advisor, barrister or solicitor who is offering or taking bungs then I hope you can’t sleep at night, how dare you play with a child’s life, you are the utter scum of the earth.

That’s probably enough for today, all I would say is that I support both mothers and fathers who do the right thing by their child. If you can agree between you then I’d say great and steer clear of Family Court. If you have to go through Family Court then chose a solicitor who will both be honest with you and help you do the right thing. If you struggle to communicate for various reasons try a parenting app, they can be extremely helpful and it’s your child who will benefit in the end. I do want to finish this with a statement; I think that domestic abuse is disgusting, and if you’re a perpetrator reading this then you should be utterly ashamed of yourself. If I wasn’t a Christian who believes in certain values, I would probably say to any abuser, I hope you rot in hell, but I am a Christian so therefore I would say don’t try to get away with it by using false claims, stand up and admit your crime and head for the nearest door that has the sign reform a twat on it.