The Family Justice Response to Domestic Abuse - The Report
The report of the three-year project was launched at a conference in Oxford on 3rd October 2024.
Many of those who assisted with the research attended the conference.
Download the full report in English: The Family Justice Response to Domestic Abuse
Scroll down to read a summary paragraph of each chapter and to download each chapter.
The full report is also available in French, Italian and Spanish.
Download the full report in French: La réponse de la justice familiale aux violences domestiques
Download the full report in Italian: La risposta della giustizia familiare agli abusi domestici
Download the full report in Spanish: La respuesta de la justicia familiar al maltrato doméstico
The report will also be available in Bosnian on these pages very shortly.
Part 1 - Executive Summary and Recommendations
Domestic abuse is one of the most serious and pervasive forms of violence against women and girls and constitutes a violation of their human rights. Given the prevalence of domestic abuse in relationships, and that separation from a perpetrator can be the most dangerous period for the victim, a focus of increasing concern for women’s organisations and academics across Europe has been the dangers posed by post-separation contact to both adult and child victims (either as direct victims or as witnesses and including sexual abuse). The phenomena of domestic abuse perpetrators using family law proceedings as a tool to continue the abuse, and coercion has been demonstrated by a substantial body of research.
Download Part 1 - Executive Summary and Recommendations
Part 2 - Research Methods
Research aims
The research aims to understand in each of the jurisdictions:
1. The experiences of survivors of the family justice system.
2. The role that key stakeholders in the family justice system: judges, lawyers and court appointed experts, play within this process and what their knowledge and understanding of the impact of experiencing domestic abuse is.
3. The structural, institutional, and cultural factors that impact upon access to justice for survivors within the family justice system.
4. The impact/importance, if any, of human rights law and policy in this area of the law.
Part 3 - The Research Locations and Research Context
This chapter outlines the legal and policy context of each jurisdictions response to domestic abuse allegations and the relevant legal framework which applies to applications for custody and visitation rights.
Download Part 3 - The Research Locations and Research Context
Part 4 - Understandings of Domestic Abuse
The vast majority of judges and court appointed experts that were interviewed had received training on domestic abuse in their workplace, whereas for most lawyers it depended upon whether they specialised in this area. However, training was not updated and was often left to local networks or individuals to organise for themselves. The lack of compulsory training is a particular concern for court appointed experts, outside of England and Wales and there was significant concern expressed in Italy around the lack of preparedness for the large scale reforms that were recently introduced.
Part 5 - Experiences of Justice
The main expectation that survivors had of the family justice system and the professionals working in it, was that of protection. i.e. that measures would be taken to protect their children from further abuse. However, the experiences of the majority of survivors in the sample was the opposite; most survivors felt their children were left unprotected, with serious consequences in some cases. The majority of survivors also felt that their experiences of abuse were unheard and not taken into account, even where corroborative evidence existed. Others felt they were expressly shut down or put under pressure to negate their experiences of violence in order to progress the case.
Part 6 - Barriers to Justice
Although there was some evidence of a good degree of cooperation in principle between the different stakeholders within the family justice system and between social services and criminal justice mechanisms, significant difficulties remain. Stakeholders reported a lack of coordination which resulted in family courts not being kept up to date with relevant criminal proceedings that were simultaneously being undertaken. In France, Spain and Italy there was a notable issue with communication between the family, child protection and criminal system, no doubt due to a lack of national oversight and protocols in place to facilitate it.
Part 7 - Parental Alienation
In general, there was a good degree of awareness of the concept across the jurisdictions and across the stakeholder groups and some knowledge of the widespread concern in the literature about its origin and usage with respect to victims of domestic abuse. However, an awareness that the term is problematic and/or prohibited did not result in the eradication of the concept and assumptions underpinning it. Stakeholders reported across the jurisdictions that the terminology used is irrelevant, the key issue, is the instrumentalization of the behaviours that are associated with parental alienation. Consequently, stakeholders reported evidence of the widespread and continued utilisation of the concept in all but name, and a perception that it explained certain behaviours, not excepted by allegations of domestic abuse.
Part 8 - The Impact of Human Rights
Although there was a general consensus amongst stakeholders across all groups and jurisdictions that human rights were relevant and helpful, they were viewed as background context rather than an active tool within proceedings. Moreover, a large number of stakeholders across the jurisdictions, acknowledged that the rights of survivors were rarely specifically cited by lawyers in their arguments, even though these rights were clearly relevant.