CCChat-Magazine_Issue-16

harm to the victims and the children it
affects.
So I’m a great believer in having specialist
family courts that deal with domestic
abuse that, not only, understand domestic
abuse but also the connected issues such
as child contact decisions, but also
maintenance payments because, at the
moment, there is not enough joined up
thinking, certainly not around
recognising that witholding child
maintenance is financial abuse as it has
an impact not only on the parent who
should be in receipt of it, but everyone in
that household.
We want to dismantle immunity for
judges and lawyers and mental health
providers who are biased in their
perspective, who come to the table
thinking that survivors make things up,
that women make things up and there’s
no abuse.
All of the different connections around
post separation abuse such as abusers
who claim parental alienation, parents
who are refusing child contact unless it is
on their terms or issues over schooling
and kids clubs , that have a direct impact
on the victim/survivor parent but is often
ignored when it needs to form part of the
greater picture of harms that aggregate
and detrimentally impact a parent’s
ability to parent effectively.
"We want to dismantle immunity for judges and lawyers and mental health
providers who are biased in their perspective, who come to the table
thinking that survivors make things up"
Teri Yuan
So these people should not be working in
these positions and making these
decisions, causing additional harm that
actually ripples through society for
generations and has a huge economic
cost.
M: I think that is a really good idea. I’ve
always thought that there needs to be a
database of judges’ decision making - a
record from which we could, if needed,
identify which judges have a consistently
poor record in this area so the ones that
are identified need to not be hearing these
cases as their decision making is causing
I don’t know what it’s like in the US, by all
accounts it seems to be worse than here in
the UK, but even so, professionals can
have a very entrenched view that they will
not be budged from, so there needs to be
a way of ascertaining a person’s biased
leanings – and not just for someone who
knows which professional to go to, to
obtain a report that is favourable to their
client but there should be an open record
of decision making that shows a track
record of bias, so that people know that
this person is likely to favour a certain
outcome because, despite their stated
neutrality, this is their belief system.
Making The Invisible Visible