By Tess Reidy
This is a case about parents who separated almost a decade ago and who have been in and out of the family courts ever since. Contact arrangements have gone from 50:50 shared care, to the children living with the father and having only supervised contact with the mother. She says he has broken existing orders and withheld contact over two separate time periods during the last three years, impacting on the children’s rights to have a continued, meaningful relationship with her and her extended family. There is an allegation of sexual abuse from one of the children against the mother further preventing contact with her.
During the last proceedings, the children said they wanted to live with the father and the court agreed to this. The influence of the father’s current partner has been brought into question at several points throughout the last two sets of proceedings, according to the mother. She says there is evidence that the father and his partner have also been manipulating and leading the children in their views. The court hearing last month was part of a struggle to get contact reestablished.Friends, who were astounded that it had been allowed to get to this point, encouraged the mother to get in touch with the press. I joined the court via video link where the camera began by facing The Royal Coat of Arms on the wall. The wait was unusually long and when everybody joined the room and the camera was moved around, it was immediately apparent that something was the matter. It transpired that before entering the court, the children’s Guardian had suggested to the mother that she had not considered the implications of inviting the press as the children might see an article online.
Although it was not necessary to inform the court who had invited the press, or indeed if invited at all, this case began with the judge being told by the mother’s lawyer that she had not thought about the impact on the children and of it potentially being used against her in an already precarious situation. It was submitted to the judge that the mother had changed her mind and it was suggested by her lawyer that it would be better if I left.
Under Practice Direction FPR27.11, a journalist may be excluded from a hearing only where it is ‘necessary’ in the interests of the child, the safety or protection of parties or others, or the orderly conduct of proceedings. This was not one of those cases. The series of case law now is clear that just saying a child might be able to google this, is not a reason to exclude a journalist from court.
Identification of children online and the way in which that might impact their welfare is certainly something the court needs to take into account when deciding whether to allow a journalist to report what they see and hear in court, but the transparency order only allows for anonymous reporting. When considering the content of the transparency order the court should be weighing in the balance all of the parties rights, including the press’ and the mother’s right to freedom of expression. Where reporting can take place anonymously, the balance of rights weighs in favour of freedom of expression of the press. If a Guardian wants to prevent reporting, they are required to set out the actual risk to the children where reporting is anonymous. Although I was not required to leave the court, I accepted the mother’s wishes and left the proceedings.
Parents, like this one, often feel there is no other way to get their case heard except via the press. Struggling to fight back against the system, they hope a journalist might improve accountability. Yet despite the nationwide push for transparency in family courts, they are then being told they are not thinking of their children. With this playing out in court in this way, the damage was perhaps already done. She was on the back foot from the start.
In many ways, this is symbolic of the teething problems with the rollout so far. The courts do not make it easy for journalists to attend. There are no phone lines for most individual courts and emails often go unanswered. As a result, journalists are generally not going to know about cases unless they are contacted by someone involved, and they are not going to just sit and watch every case that goes on in the family court until they see something worth covering.
Meanwhile, parents may be put off turning to the press if they feel they are going to be blamed for inviting them along. By going against the mother and her wishes I would have got the whole story. But as it is, this is only part of the information. We have not got the father’s side at all. Did the mother ever get more than the supervised contact she currently has? Can they reestablish their relationship and go back to shared custody? This time, we’ll never know.
Blog post published 8th April 2025
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