Family Court judgments 2022
14 January 2022
Judge: Soraya McKinnell
Expert: Melanie Gill
Barrister for father: Femi Ogunlende (McFarlane’s Transparency Implementation Group)
20 January 2022
Judge: Stephen Cobb
Barrister for mother: Charlotte Proudman instructed by Beck Fitzgerald
A and B (Child Arrangements: Parental Alienation) [2022] EWFC B11
26 January 2022
Judge: Recorder Laura Moys
Parental alienation by the father against the mother.
Expert not named: “clinical psychologist Dr S… a very experienced expert who is well-known to the family Court”.
Father represented by Andrew Bagchi.
Transparency Project: “Something is going on with experts” commented on a “smattering of recent judgments involving psychologists or so-called ‘alienation experts’ who are anonymised. Some of them are specific that the instructed expert was a ‘clinical psychologist’ (which is a protected title and regulated), but others do not even give this limited information. See, for example :
A and B (Child Arrangements: Parental Alienation) [2022] EWFC B11. Unnamed court and unnamed clinical psychologist, who identifies alienation.
F v M [2021] EWFC B101 (not published until 2022). Unnamed court, and all experts and social worker anonymised and discipline / qualifications not stated.
This is not normal. Both in the sense that it is not usual practice to anonymise experts in Family Court judgments (and guidance supports the naming of experts in general eg the 2014 Publication of Judgments Guidance issued by Sir James Munby as President), and in the sense that it is odd. There is nothing in the judgments we’ve seen to indicate any reason for needing to afford anonymity to these experts – there may be explanations but if there are the judges have not summarised them in their judgments, which is regrettable.”
17 February 2022
Recorder Talbott allowed the mother’s appeal to include her allegation of non-consensual sexual touching in public in the fact-finding hearing, which would examine her other allegations of coercive and controlling behaviour and the father’s counter allegation of parental alienation.
2 March 2022
Judges: Geoffrey Vos, Andrew McFarlane, Eleanor King
Barrister for mother: Jessica Lee
Fact finding in favour of the mother overturned. Father accused mother of parental alienation.
K v K – Court of Appeal give guidance on fact-finding hearings and on MIAMs, Julie Doughty, Transparency Project, 15 April 2022
What happened to the Ks?, Charlotte Baker, Transparency Project, 15 December 2023
[2022] EWHC 113 Griffiths v Griffiths (Guidance on Contact Costs)
Judge: Emma Arbuthnot
4 April 2022
Judge: Emma Arbuthnot
Judge Khatun Sapnara had ordered a transfer of residence from the mother to the father on the advice of “Dr Willemson” - presumably Hessel Willemsen - after finding that the mother had coached the children to make false allegations against the father and sought to “recruit professionals to her own view of the father, and to alienate them from him”. However, she had declined the father’s request for a costs order against the mother. Judge Emma Arbuthnot refused to award costs for the relocation hearing and welfare hearing, but awarded £37,000 costs to the father for the fact finding hearing.
8 April 2022
Judges: Geoffrey Vos, Andrew McFarlane, Eleanor King
Ben Jonas Alcott v Katy Elizabeth Ashworth & Anor [2022] EWHC 3687 (Fam)
13 April 2022
Judge: Emma Arbuthnot
Fathers 4 Justice
28 June 2022
Judge: Recorder Shelley Hesford
Experts: Nicholas Alwin and Gordon Milson of Bury
Local authority: Salford
Transfer of residence from mother to father.
Followed by:
Mother’s application for reversal of transfer of residence rejected.
15 July 2022
Judges: Julia Macur, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nugee
The Metropolitan Police Service appealed against an order by Judge Michael Keehan forbidding the police (or local authority) from interviewing the two children about their complaints of abuse by their father following a forced transfer of residence from the mother to the father on the grounds of parental alienation diagnosed by Janine Braier and Karen Woodall. The appeal was allowed.
This case follows on from A and B (Parental Alienation: No.1, No.2, No.3 and No.4)
8 August 2022
Judge: Nathalie Lieven from an earlier judgement by Judge Hilary Watson.
Expert: Trish Barry-Relph
Barrister for father: Sarah Tyler of Coram Chambers instructed by Venters Solicitors.
Warwickshire County Council and HHJ Watson agreed with the father that this was a case of parental alienation and a transfer of residence was ordered. Independent social worker and parental alienation expert, Trish Barry-Relph, was instructed to carry out a Therapeutic Residential Reunification Plan. The children ran away from home. Z was placed with a foster carer and became suicidal. The guardian agreed she was competent to instruct her own legal representation. Judge Lieven ordered that Z should be allowed to return to live with her mother.
Reported by Julie Doughty at the Transparency Project.
4 April 2022
Judge: Emma Arbuthnot
Judge Khatun Sapnara had ordered a transfer of residence from the mother to the father on the advice of “Dr Willemson” - presumably Hessel Willemsen - after finding that the mother had coached the children to make false allegations against the father and sought to “recruit professionals to her own view of the father, and to alienate them from him”. However, she had declined the father’s request for a costs order against the mother. Judge Emma Arbuthnot refused to award costs for the relocation hearing and welfare hearing, but awarded £37,000 costs to the father for the fact finding hearing.