Summary of fraud allegations against Karen and Nick Woodall
In February 2011 the Education Secretary, Tim Loughton, issued a press release announcing £60 million grant funding to voluntary and community sector organisations, including £420,000 to the Centre for Separated Families, the charity run by Karen and Nick Woodall. In 2017 I made a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Education, which confirmed that the Centre for Separated Families was paid £444,000.
In July 2011 HM Revenue and Customs petitioned the Insolvency Court to wind up the Centre for Separated Families, which owed it around £164,000 relating to unpaid PAYE and National Insurance contributions.
On 24 August 2011 the Insolvency Court agreed that the Centre for Separated Families could continue trading under a supervised Company Voluntary Arrangement, subject to monthly debt repayments of £3,100. The supervisor of the CVA told me by phone that neither Karen Woodall, Nick Woodall, nor the other directors, told her about the Department for Education grant.
In July 2012 and October 2012 the Department for Work and Pensions gave two separate contracts to the Centre for Separated Families. A Freedom of Information request shows that the DWP paid £19,630 for the first contract and £23,500 for the second contract.
According to the insolvency supervisor’s report on Companies House, the directors of the Centre for Separated Families stopped making payments towards the Company Voluntary Arrangement in January 2013, and the total amount they repaid was just £55,000. The last set of accounts ever submitted to Companies House was for the financial year ending 31 March 2011.
In December 2013 the Centre for Separated Families was removed from the Charity Commission website.
In December 2016 the Centre for Separated Families was finally wound up as a company on Companies House, owing £178,000 to HM Revenue and Customs. The insolvency supervisor recorded that the directors had been uncooperative with her.
The total amount of income from government sources was £487,130.
The total amount the Centre for Separated Families paid in accordance to its Company Voluntary Arrangement was £55,000.
The amount of money unaccounted for is £432,130.
These allegations are outlined in detail, with supporting evidence, on the page Centre for Separated Families.
My website examines the other companies set up by Karen and Nick Woodall. My evidence suggests strongly that the money from the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions was siphoned into these other companies. My evidence also shows that Karen and Nick Woodall earned substantial amounts of income from 2010, in addition to the government income, developing their specialism in “parental alienation”. They ran workshops, provided advice and counselling, and Karen Woodall acted as an expert witness in the family courts. Their company, Separated Families (Europe), submitted accounts for a dormant company to Companies House for several years, indicating that they paid no tax on the income derived from these activities.
https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/karen-and-nick-woodalls-six-companies
https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/centre-for-separated-families
https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/separated-families-europe
https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/isle-of-wight-separated-families
https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/jersey-centre-for-separated-families
https://www.centreforsocialinjustice.org/family-separation-clinic
My website also shows that this pattern of setting up other companies with similar names, for the apparent purpose of laundering income, was not new. In 2005 property solicitor and fellow director, Philip Lewis Ogden, set up a duplicate company, whose memorandum of association permitted the transfer of funds from the original company. Both companies underwent a flurry of name changes in summer 2007, at precisely the same time that a large building owned by the company/charity was sold for apparently half its market value to an individual who raised the mortgage for the purchase via Philip Lewis Ogden. At the end of that financial year, despite the property sale, there were no funds available to pay debts to HMRC.
Key allies in the Centre for Social Justice and Government
Elly Farmer
Elly Farmer is the daughter of Lord Farmer, the multi millionaire metals trader, fundamentalist evangelical Christian, former Conservative Party Treasurer, major donor to the Conservative Party, and now Conservative peer.
Elly Farmer was a guest on Radio 4’s Bringing Up Britain in 2009, alongside Nick Woodall of the Centre for Separated Families, Christine Tufnell of Care for the Family, and Penny Mansfield of One Plus One.
In 2012 Elly Farmer was co-author, with Samantha Callan, of a controversial Centre for Social Justice report called “Beyond Violence”, which was criticised by Heather Harvey of Eaves Housing for Women for blaming victims of domestic abuse. Callan and Farmer adopt a controversial theory on domestic violence developed by American, Michael Johnson, in 2008, in which domestic violence is “differentiated” into different types of violence, only one of which - coercive, controlling violence - is irredeemably dangerous. This is the same theory espoused by Karen and Nick Woodall, and it contradicts the accepted cross governmental definition of domestic violence.
In 2013 Elly Farmer was co-author of a Centre for Social Justice report, “Fractured Families”, alongside Samantha Callan, Nick Woodall and others. In 2014 she co-authored a further report, “Fully Committed?”, alongside Samantha Callan and Nick Woodall.
Tim Loughton
Conservative MP for Worthing and East Shoreham, Tim Loughton, was Education Minister in the Coalition Government from May 2010 to September 2012. He was responsible for the Department for Education Voluntary and Community Sector Grant for 2011-2013, which awarded £30 million for relationship support, including millions of pounds to individuals and organisations connected to Samantha Callan, the Centre for Social Justice, CARE and Care for the Family. It was under this grant that Tim Loughton awarded £420,000 to the Centre for Separated Families, eventually paying Karen and Nick Woodall £444,000.
Tim Loughton loathes feminists, which is why he got on so well with Karen and Nick Woodall. In 2014 he travelled to the Channel Islands to help Karen Woodall with the official launch of Jersey Centre for Separated Families.
Tim Loughton continues to agitate in Parliament about parental alienation, presumably on behalf of Karen and Nick Woodall. Although he claims to be committed to fighting against child sexual abuse and domestic violence, he seems oblivious to the risks that these could be misdiagnosed as parental alienation, particularly if diagnosed by the fraudsters whom he supports.
In 2012 he proposed removing passports and driving licences from mothers who failed to cooperate with contact orders from the family courts, and to impose curfews. Interestingly, these are the same enforcement powers for which primary legislation has existed for over a decade for child support (in the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008) - but which the Coalition and Conservative Government refuse to use.
In a parliamentary debate on parental alienation on 15 March 2017, he complained about the “miniscule” number of mothers imprisoned or who have their children’s residence transferred to fathers.
Sir Oliver Heald patiently explained that “what may appear to be alienating behaviour by a resident parent may, in fact, be the result of other concerns”, such as “significant ongoing welfare concerns”.
Tim Loughton shares Iain Duncan Smith’s obsession that single mothers are sending Britain to hell in a handcart.
After David Cameron sacked him as Education Minister, he issued a press release through the Centre for Social Justice: “[The CSJ] urges the formation of a Government department for families led by a senior figure committed to tackling family breakdown, especially in the poorest parts of the country.”
At a Centre for Social Justice event with the quirky title, “How do we hold onto the family in a time of fungible relationships and sexual liberation?” he:
- Blamed the 2011 riots on the “herd instinct” of young men from broken families
- Said of his former ministerial colleague: “The person who was actually in charge of family policy amongst the ministerial team at the DfE was Sarah Teather. Which was a bit difficult because she didn't really believe in family. She certainly didn't produce one of her own. So it became a bit of a family-free zone. I think that was a huge disappointment”
A kindred spirit of Karen Woodall, he loathes “Harriet Harperson” and the “ghastly regiment of feminists who have taken us so far from family values”.
He was Karen Woodall’s main ally in the unsuccessful campaign to get a statement on the presumption of shared parenting included in the Children Act 1914, and was criticised by Sir David Norgrove, the head of the Family Justice Review, for his comments.
He voted against gay marriage, believing that marriage is a “gift of god” between a man and woman.
Although the Centre for Separated Families owed so much tax to HMRC that the Insolvency Court forced it to enter a company voluntary arrangement, he was so captivated by Karen and Nick Woodall’s rabid misogyny that he paid them £444,000 to train children’s centre and nursery workers to disbelieve and minimise children’s and mothers’ allegations of abuse.
The payments were made under the same grant from which he paid £8.9 million to Kids Company. Giving evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in 2015, he
Long after Karen and Nick Woodall had outlived their usefulness to Iain Duncan Smith and Maria Miller, Tim Loughton remained close to them. He travelled to the Channel Islands to launch the Jersey Centre for Separated Families alongside Karen Woodall. He has continued to agitate about parental alienation in Parliament, calling for mothers to be criminalised for making “false” allegations of abuse.
Tim Loughton does not appear to be a fully fledged member of the British Religious Right. He is closely connected with the Centre for Social Justice, but at heart appears to be more of an old-style Church of England, anti-feminist, right wing duffer than a covert biblical fundamentalist.
Karen Woodall has written a prolific blog since 2009. She has a dedicated band of followers, including several members of Families Need Fathers, Nick Langford and Paul “Haywain” Manning of Fathers 4 Justice, and Mike Buchanan of Justice 4 Men and Boys. Several mothers are fans, notably Leigh Hyatt, who was the front woman for Isle of Wight Separated Families, and Lisa Cohen of JUMP (Jewish Unity for Multiple Parenting), who, together with Families Need Fathers, supplied three of the quotes chosen from the 731 responses to the Green Paper to feature in the Government’s response to the Green Paper in 2011. Several followers are grandmothers - mothers of adult sons “alienated” from their children by vindictive mothers. Many of Karen Woodall’s followers appear genuine, and genuinely grateful to her, almost slavish in their devotion. However, there is also among some men, and their mothers, a refusal to accept any blame, and a distinct hostility to the concept of paying child support. It is very difficult to work out whether these mothers are fighting on behalf of sons who are really innocent victims of manipulative, abusive women or whether they are the kind of mothers who refuse to accept that their sons could do any wrong.
Karen and Nick Woodall diverted funds from the Centre for Separated Families for many years, both before and after 2010. In a similar way to Samantha Callan’s crew of fundamentalist Christians, they feel comfortable lying and committing fraud because they believe they are working for the greater good.
Karen and Nick Woodall believed they had pioneered a new, father-inclusive way of working with separated families. For five years from 2008 to 2013, they were at the heart of child maintenance reform, initially, it seems, thanks to their long partnership with Christine Skinner of York University and then thanks to their patronage by Samantha Callan and Iain Duncan Smith in the Centre for Social Justice.
They stole money from the Centre for Separated Families in order to develop their own network of “family separation hubs”, bitter and frustrated at not persuading the Government to fund them to do this. However, these hubs do not seem to have materialised into anything concrete or sustainable - instead, they seem to have functioned mainly as a way to siphon off income from the Centre for Separated Families instead of paying their debts to HM Revenue and Customs.
In her blog on 9 May 2014, Karen Woodall goes into her plans in depth with Jerry Karlin of Families Need Fathers:
“Creating the change we want to see lies not in lobbying remote government Ministers or negotiating with disinterested civil servants but in our own hands, the hands of men and women who have been affected by family separation and the hands of men and women who work on the front line of family change.”
“You write of consultations and HSSF marks, things I have absolutely no interest in anymore, I have been there, done that and can see where it gets us. I only have an infinite time left on this planet, I want to make change happen, not hope it will.
You can see what we do here http://www.familyseparationhub.net
And here http://jerseyseparatedfamilies.org.je/
And here http://www.islandseparatedfamilies.org.uk/
And here http://www.familyseparationclinic.co.uk
And here http://puttingchildrenfirsteu.wordpress.com/about/
The latter is in the process of being reformed around practitioner support for shared parenting across Europe, more details soon.
I hope this helps you to understand how my views arise, all based upon facts, all based upon actual experience, none based on anything other than the knowledge that this has brought and all based upon not wanting to waste a minute more of my precious time doing anything other than being the change I want to see in the world.”
“If anyone at FNF grass roots want to DO IT and wants more information about what we are doing then come on over and we will give you all the information you need to revolutionise your work into practical support for shared parenting, instead of banging your head against closed government doors, come and do what we know needs doing and make a difference on a daily basis – away from the courts and the government and the ‘there is only one way to do it’ there is another world…”
It will be a long long long long time before we see the doors to change creaking open in government but we don’t have to wait, we don’t have to ask, we don’t have to beg, we don’t have to do anything at all – apart from do it ourselves. We have child contact centres signing up, therapy centres signing up, we have FNF groups already interested, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune and it doesn’t require CEO salaries or HQ’s with fancy furniture – that’s last century, that’s power base building, that’s playing the establishment game. If Jerry won’t tour the grass roots I will and anyone and everyone who wants to dance to their own tune is welcome to come and join us. I mean it, there’s not time to waste, people live and die hoping that change will happen, not us – come on in the water’s lovely and we are having a ball! x”
Karen and Nick Woodall appear to rent rather than own their luxury Docklands apartment. However, it does seem that they own a property in Cornwall. On 27 December 2016 Karen Woodall blogged:
“The days between Christmas and my return to work are usually spent with family and then together with my husband Nick at our Cornish retreat, a place which I treasure because of the healing it brings. Working as we do, on many different projects at once, the hours are long and we are often miles apart as we both travel a lot in our work. When it comes to the winter break, which is the only time we close our work down properly each year, it is a much needed period of reflection and review.”