Family Court judgments pre 2010
EWHC = High Court of England and Wales
EWCA = England and Wales Court of Appeal
FLR = Family Law Rules
Review of research and case law on parental alienation commissioned by Cafcass Cymru from Julie Doughty at Cardiff University, 2018
casemine.com - use search terms such as “parental alienation” and “intractable hostility”.
Parental alienation and intractable contact case law listed on Michael Robinson’s Custody Minefield website.
Transparency through publication of family court judgments: An evaluation of the responses to, and effects of, judicial guidance on publishing family court judgments involving children and young people, Julie Doughty, Alice Twaite and Paul Magrath, Cardiff University
Re L and others (Contact: Domestic Violence) [2001] Fam 260
Mentions Ludwig Lowenstein as an early proponent of parental alienation.
Sturge and Glaser
Four linked appeals, analysed by Felicity Kaganas of Brunel University.
Also analysed by Adrienne Barnett of Brunel University in a paper published on 7 January 2020: A genealogy of hostility: parental alienation in England and Wales:
“The first reported case in which PAS was raised was Re L itself. The father in M had relied on a report by Dr Lowenstein, a PAS ‘expert’, who wrote prolifically about PAS and was the favoured expert of the fathers’ rights movement. He ‘diagnosed’ PAS and recommended therapy, to be conducted by himself. Sturge and Glaser (2000) disputed the authenticity of PAS as it was not recognised in the American or international classifications of disorders or by UK. One of the difficulties in gaining acceptance for PAS in this case was the expert himself. According to King (2002, p. 617), in England and Wales, unlike the USA, ‘it is not the concept that is to be tested, but the experts themselves. In other words, the distinction between reliable and unreliable is personalized’. Both the trial judge and the Court of Appeal were dubious about the expertise of Dr Lowenstein, describing him as ‘at one end of a broad spectrum of mental health practitioners’. PAS was accepted in only one case, Re L (Contact: Genuine Fear) [2002] 1 FLR 621, but it is suggested that this was largely due to the instruction of a more acceptable expert, Dr Berelowitz, a consultant psychiatrist, who was well known and respected by the family courts. In the years that followed, while Dr Lowenstein and some entrenched fathers continued to press for acceptance of PAS…”
Re C (Prohibition of Further Applications) [2002] EWCA Civ 292
Also known as Re C (children: contact); [2002] 3 FCR 183 and [2002] 1 FLR 1136. I cannot find any of them on bailii. Only available on VLex, which has a paywall so only the first part of the judgment can be read.
Judges: The President Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Lord Justice Thorpe, Lord Justice Kay
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, Bernard Rix, Mary Arden
Barristers: Deborah Eaton, Nicholas Mostyn
Reported in Community Care 2003. Referred to in Poisonous Parenting by Maureen Freely in The Guardian on 1 October 2002.
18 July 2002
The father demanded a psychologist to assess “Parental alienation syndrome”.
Also called Re M (Intractable Contact Dispute: Interim Care Order)
Judge: Nicholas Wall
When It Comes to Contact Disputes, What Are Family Courts For? Felicity Kaganas, 2010
“Dr W” - Kirk Weir?
Adrienne Barnett, A genealogy of hostility: parental alienation in England and Wales, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 7 January 2020
“The only case during this period [2002 to 2004] in which PA did not succeed involved what could be termed a ‘political’ father – ‘crusading’ fathers usually connected with fathers’ rights groups. Re O [2003] EWHC 3031 (Fam) concerned an application by Shaun O’Connell, a prominent campaigner with Fathers4Justice, who had been convicted of causing criminal damage to the offices of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) (Ipswich Star 2003). O’Connell’s allegations of PA/PAS against the mother were rejected, Wall J saying they were ‘part and parcel of [his] attempt to absolve himself of responsibility’.”
Fathers for Justice vow to fight on, Ipswich Star, 5 September 2003
“Dr B”
“Dr L” was possibly Ludwig Lowenstein.
Case analysed by Ruth Cain in The Court of Motherhood: Affect, Alienation and Redefinitions of Responsible Parenting, 2011
28 January 2004
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, Robert Carnwath
4 February 2004
Judge: Nicholas Wall
Expert: “Mrs P”
Re G (a child) [2003] EWCA Civ 1055
Judges: The President (Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, Lord Justice Mathew Thorpe, Lord Justice Bernard Rix.
The father successfully appealed against an order, with an attached penal notice, that: “"The father is prohibited from disclosing in any manner any papers or documents filed in these proceedings or their content or any school reports he may obtain to either Dr Richard Gardner or Dr Ludwig Lowenstein or any other expert in parental alienation syndrome or any other agency or organisation such as Families Need Fathers without the specific permission of the court."
Re D (Intractable Contact Dispute: Publicity) [2004] EWCA 727
1 April 2004
Judge: James Munby
Justice Munby called this case “an exercise in absolute futility”, a phrase borrowed by Nick Langford of Fathers 4 Justice (and later, Wikivorce, and one of the premier British bloggers on parental alienation) for his book, “An Exercise in Absolute Futility”.
James Munby reflected on the case in his speech to Shared Parenting Scotland (formerly Families Need Fathers) on 10 February 2020.
“False allegations of misconduct are highly damaging and destructive. I agree with Wall J when he said in Re M at para [12]:
"In an intractable contact dispute, where the residential parent is putting forward an allegedly factual basis for contact not taking place, there is no substitute … for findings by the court as to whether or not there is any substance to the allegations."
The court should grasp the nettle. Such allegations should be speedily investigated and resolved, not left to fester unresolved and a continuing source of friction and dispute. Court time must be found – and found without delay –for fact finding hearings. Judges must resist the temptation to delay the evil day in the hope that perhaps the problem will go away. Judges must also resist the temptation to put contact 'on hold', or to direct that it is to be supervised, pending investigation of the allegations. And allegations which could have been made at an earlier stage should be viewed with appropriate scepticism. Once findings have been made, everybody must thereafter approach the case on the basis of the facts as judicially found. As Wall J said in Re M at para [128], "these are not questions which can be reopened." He went on to point out that if a parent persists in assertions contrary to such judicial findings, that is plain evidence of a refusal to recognise reality and what is in the interests of the children.”
When It Comes to Contact Disputes, What Are Family Courts For? Felicity Kaganas, 2010, page 22
5 May 2004
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, Jonathan Bennett
20 May 2004
Judge: Joyanne Bracewell
Transfer of residence from mother to father after allegations of sexual abuse ruled unfounded.
Reported in The Guardian obituary of Justice Bracewell in 2007.
When It Comes to Contact Disputes, What Are Family Courts For? Felicity Kaganas, 2010
1 December 2004
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, Mary Arden, David Neuberger
Judges: Alan Ward and Thomas Scott Baker
Reported in Family Law Week.
Alienated mother.
[2005] NI Fam 4 - O and S (Residence Order: Contact: Implacable Hostility)
4 May 2005
Judge: John Gillen
Expert: Dr Fionnuala Leddy
G (A Child) [2006] EWCA Civ 348
31 January 2006
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, Stephen Sedley, John Thomas
25 August 2006
Judge: Nicholas Wall
Appeals by two separate fathers were dismissed. Both claimed to be victims of parental alienation. One demanded a psychological report by Ludwig Lowenstein.
15 June 2007
Judges: Mark Hedley and Nicholas Wilson
Expert: Dr Anderson - who I think is this Dr Ian Anderson, who is registered with the British Psychological Society and the Health and Care Professions Council.
A disastrous transfer of residence from mother to father was reversed.
A genealogy of hostility: parental alienation in England and Wales, Adrienne Barnett, January 2020:
“PA was accepted in Re A (a Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 899, principally because a ‘credible’ expert, Dr Anderson, raised it as ‘likely’ to happen in the future. This was an unsuccessful appeal by a mother against a transfer of residence to the father. There are indications of unresolved allegations of domestic abuse in the judgment. Brissenden (2010) reports that the child was so unhappy living with the father that he became suicidal. He was returned to his mother, having been ‘irreparably harmed’ by the move.”
Case examined by Claire Brissenden in Family Law Week in 2010, in the context of reporting on [2010] EWCA Civ 219, which used parental alienation expert, Kirk Weir, and which, she observed, bore “striking similarities”.
C (A Child) [2007] EWCA Civ 866
3 July 2007
Judges: Alan Ward, John Thomas, Stephen Richards
When It Comes to Contact Disputes, What Are Family Courts For?, Felicity Kaganas, 2010
26 July 2007
Judges: Nicholas Wall and Hugh Bennett
Father’s appeal against Andrew McFarlane’s refusal that he was a victim of parental alienation was dismissed.
11 October 2007
Judge: Christopher Sumner
Expert: Mark Berelowitz
28 March 2008
Judge: Nicholas Wall
Appeal allowed against an order to send a mother to prison for defying a contact order for her children to have contact with their paternal grandparents after the father was released from prison for “several serious criminal offences against the mother, including harassment and administering a poison obnoxious substance with intent to injure her”.
[2008] EWCA Civ 1181
Judge: Nicholas Wall
Expert: Kirk Weir
Burgess v Stokes [2009] EWCA Civ 548
A breastfeeding mother lost her appeal against a sentence of three concurrent terms of 28 days imprisonment for breaching contact orders.
Parental alienation and intractable contact disputes: an update, Henry Clayton, Family Law Week, 1 June 2012
20 May 2008
Judges: Nicholas Wall, Stephen Richards, Paul Kennedy. Previous Judge: Paul Coleridge.
When It Comes to Contact Disputes, What Are Family Courts For? Felicity Kaganas, 2010, page 36
30 July 2008
Judges: Mark Potter, Thomas Scott Baker, Robin Auld
Psychologist: female, unnamed, “Ms D”
12 November 2008
Judges: Alan Ward, Stanley Burnton, William Aldous
When It Comes to Contact Disputes, What Are Family Courts For? Felicity Kaganas, 2010, page 47:
“In the recent case of Re P (Children) the Court of Appeal, determined to deal with ‘the true underlying issue’ in a contact case, was willing to consider recommending counselling for a mother whom the judge in the court below had concluded was truthful and not suffering from any mental disorder. The therapy, it was said, ‘might go some little way to assuaging the father’s implacable conviction that she is a woman with severe mental problems such as to spill over to the detriment of his children’. The father, who had been back to court 66 times, and who had engaged in what the court considered ‘less serious’ violence, was expected to seek help in the form of anger management classes. However the court clearly sympathized with his point of view; he needed an arena in which he could ‘explain his feelings of anger and bitterness’ resulting from the marriage breakdown and difficulties over the children (who were refusing to see him): ‘It is enough to make any ordinary man just a little bit angry, but that anger has to be contained….hence the need for him to subject himself to what may be the humiliation of counselling and therapy’. That the mother might be distressed at attending therapy that she appeared not to need, was not mentioned.”
Parental alienation and intractable contact disputes: an update, Henry Clayton, Family Law Week, 1 June 2012
SS v KS [2009] EWHC 1575 (Fam)
3 July 2009
Adrienne Barnett would later produce research on domestic violence and parental alienation for Brunel University.
15 July 2009
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, Maurice Kay
“Historic” domestic abuse, including a threat to kill the mother, need not be revisited in a fact finding, as they were more than three years old.
29 July 2009
A father had been acquitted by a jury of sexually abusing his step daughter (by this time aged 19) for six years, but a family court judge found that he had sexually abused her. The mother believed he had also sexually abused their two younger sons. The initial Judge, Paul Coleridge made a contact order with the paternal grandparents, including indirect contact with the father, and that residence of the two sons would be transferred to the paternal grandparents if she failed to cooperate and continued to persist in her belief that they had been sexually abused by their father. The mother lost her appeal against this judgement.
Note: This is a very important case. Sir Paul Coleridge’s suspended transfer of residence order: [2009] EWCA Civ 1141, on 2 July 2009. Wikivorce:
“You may not yet have come across “the suspended residence order”. it was invented by me last year to deal with the case I was mentioning earlier. The Court of Appeal has now given this new tool its blessing on two occasions and it is now reported as Re A (suspended residence order) 2010 1 FLR 1679. It works in the same way as a suspended committal order but without the irritating technicalities attached to enforcement by committal. The court attaches clear conditions which if breached lead to immediate removal of the children to the other parent. The advantage of this order, in these intractable cases, is that the outcome lies entirely in the hands of the defaulting parent (which, of course, is made clear to him or her at the time of the making of the order). In the “A” case the suspension had to be lifted and the police finally moved the children earlier this year to their long suffering grandparents. It was all pretty grim but they are now having full and unsupervised contact to the father they had not seen for properly for four years. There are three conditions I would attach to this suspended residence order approach. Firstly, and obviously, the judge must be satisfied, at the time the suspended order is made, that the alternative home is good enough. Secondly, it must be made abundantly clear to the parent concerned that you really mean what you say, and finally there must be judicial continuity throughout. The authority must come from the judge not the process.
Custody Minefield quotes Sir Paul Coleridge writing, in the judgment:
“"a crucial measure of a resident parents ´good enough´ parenting is whether they promote frequent and continuous contact with the non resident parent." - Dr Cameron”
Dr Cameron is Hamish Cameron, one of the very first British proponents of parental alienation, and the long time supervisor of Karen Woodall.
7 October 2009
Judges: Mathew Thorpe, John Thomas, Paul Coleridge
This appears to be Sir Paul Coleridge’s famous judgment in which he invented the suspended transfer of residence order.
6 November 2009
Judge: Richard Bond
Expert: “Dr M, a child and adolescent psychiatrist” for the father.
Transfer of residence from mother to father and stepmother.
17 November 2009
Judge: Nicholas Wall refused a mother’s appeal to reverse the transfer of residence of her 11 year old son to the father on the grounds of parental alienation.