“19 children killed from 12 families. When will family courts in Britain start putting kids first?”
Britain’s family courts are the backdrop to some of the most traumatic and momentous events of people’s lives. From the removal of children from their birth parents to the denial of a parent’s desire to see their child – these are hard choices.
In the face of such familial destruction, there can only be one guiding principle. It was established in law via the Children Act 1989: that the best interests of the child must be paramount. Even where decisions are made outside the courts, professional conduct by social workers and others must also follow the same rule.
Yet, what today’s new research from charity Women’s Aid, where I am chief executive, shows is that somehow this principle has been eroded.
In cases of domestic violence – long recognised as just as damaging to children as direct abuse – it has been eroded to such an extent that children are being killed.
By uncovering the stories behind these children’s deaths, in the Nineteen Child Homicides report, we were able to identify a pattern.
We found that 19 children from 12 families had been killed in the past 10 years. Each of these children had died at the hands of a parent who was a known perpetrator of domestic abuse.
For seven of the 12 families, the perpetrator’s contact with the child had been ordered through the courts. Not understanding domestic abuse and the ongoing risk it presents, even when a relationship has ended, proved fatal.
Of course, the killings are of these children are the most extreme consequence of unsafe child contact. But the family court process is still traumatising for many who go through it.
Women’s Aid also spoke to survivors of the process. We found that 50 per cent had no access to protection measures (such as separate waiting rooms, and separate exit times) in family courts – something considered standard in criminal courts.
More worryingly, in 44 per cent of cases, contact was granted to the former partner when it was known that children had been directly abused by them.
Domestic abuse is an issue in at least 70 per cent of cases before the family courts. Yet only around one per cent of applications for contact are refused.
The principle of the child’s best interests has been fatally undermined. But it’s not the first time we have had to learn this lesson.
Twelve years ago, Women’s Aid published Twenty-nine Child Homicides, a report showing that in 13 families, children had been killed because a known perpetrator of domestic abuse had convinced the court of his right (because it is usually men) to continue as a parent.
At the time, Lord Justice Wall, the then President of the Family Division, stated: “It is, in my view, high time that the family justice system abandoned any reliance on the proposition that a man can have a history of violence to the mother of his children but, nonetheless, be a good father.”
And yet, more than a decade later, we’re in the same situation.
Polly Neate, writing in the Telegraph, full article here
The report can be read here, there is a summery on page 15, all the ‘parents’ who murdered their children were men, in two cases the mother was killed as well.
To be fair to Neate, towards the end of the article, she does name the problem as male violence, and reiterate that a court bias in mothers’ favor is a myth; and who can blame her for modifying her writing for a (small-c) conservative audience?
The 38degrees petition can be signed here.
To: Secretary of State for Justice, Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, Rt Hon Nicky Morgan MP and District Judges
We are calling on the Government and family courts to ensure there are no further avoidable child deaths as a result of unsafe child contact with a perpetrator of domestic abuse. In order for this to happen the family courts must be a safe place for all the children and survivors of domestic abuse that are relying on them to protect them from further harm.
Two ways they can do this are by:
1. Ensuring that domestic abuse is identified and its impact fully considered by the family court judiciary and that child arrangements orders put the best interests of the child(ren) first and protect the well-being of the parent the child(ren) is living with, in accordance with Practice Direction 12 J Child Arrangements & Contact Order: Domestic Violence and Harm.2. Ensuring survivors of domestic abuse attending the family court have access to protection measures, similar to those available in criminal courts. Survivors of domestic abuse should always have access to a separate waiting room or area and judges must ensure there are separate exit times from court to allow the survivor to leave safely.
Why is this important?
“No parent should have to hold their children and comfort them as they die, or be told that their child has been harmed in an act of revenge or rage. There are often many facets to one family’s breakdown, and all too often children’s voices are not heard or acted upon” (Claire Throssell, mother of Jack and Paul who were killed in October 2014 by their father after he was granted unsupervised contact with them by the family court).
Over 10 years, 19 children and 2 women have died as a result of unsafe child contact, formal or informal, with a parent who is also a perpetrator of domestic abuse. These deaths were avoidable. To protect children, the family courts must put children’s safety at the heart of any decisions they make about contact with a known perpetrator of domestic abuse.
Women’s Aid’s Child First: Safe Child Contact Saves Lives campaign is calling on the Government and the family courts to protect the children that it has been set up to keep safe. Whilst only a minority of child contact cases, after the parents have separated, are taken to the family courts many of these cases involving domestic abuse result in contact decisions which do not put the children’s safety and best interests first. This can leave them, and their non-abusive, parent in considerable danger.
We need your help so please sign and share this petition widely to ensure that all child contact is safe and there are no further avoidable child deaths.
Visit the Women’s Aid website to find out more about this campaign:
http://www.womensaid.org.uk/childfirst
“South Carolina Prosecutors Say Stand Your Ground Doesn’t Apply To Victims Of Domestic Violence”
South Carolina is one of more than 20 states that has passed an expansive Stand Your Ground law authorizing individuals to use deadly force in self-defense. The law has been used to protect a man who killed an innocent bystander while pointing his gun at several teens he called “women thugs.” But prosecutors in Charleston are drawing the line at domestic violence.
In the cases of women who claim they feared for their lives when confronted with violent intimate abusers, prosecutors say the Stand Your Ground law shouldn’t apply.
“(The Legislature’s) intent … was to provide law-abiding citizens greater protections from external threats in the form of intruders and attackers,” prosecutor Culver Kidd told the Post and Courier. “We believe that applying the statute so that its reach into our homes and personal relationships is inconsistent with (its) wording and intent.”
Most recently, Kidd raised this argument in vigorously pursuing a murder case against Whitlee Jones, whose screams for help as her boyfriend pulled her down the street by her hair prompted a neighbor to call the cops during a 2012 altercation. When the officer arrived that night, the argument had already ended and Jones had fled the scene. While she was out, Jones decided to leave her boyfriend, Eric Lee, and went back to the house to pack up her things. She didn’t even know the police officer had been there earlier that night, her lawyer Mary Ford explained. She packed a knife to protect herself, and as she exited the house, she says Lee attacked her and she stabbed Lee once in defense. He died, although Jones says she did not intend to kill him.
On October 3, Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson sided with Jones and granted her Stand Your Ground immunity, meaning she is exempt from trial on the charge. In response to Kidd’s argument that individuals could not invoke Stand Your Ground to defend against violence in their own homes, Nicholson said that dynamic would create the “nonsensical result” that a victim of domestic abuse could defend against an attacker outside of the home, but not inside the home – where the most vicious domestic violence is likely to occur.
Kidd is unsatisfied with this reasoning, and is appealing the case to argue that Jones and other defendants like her can’t invoke the Stand Your Ground law so long as they are in their home. The Post and Courier reports that there are two other similar cases coming up the pike that are being pursued by the same prosecutor’s office. In one, a judge who dismissed a murder charge against a women who stabbed a roommate attacking her called the charge “appalling.” In another, the defendant’s attorney plans to ask for a Stand Your Ground hearing.
Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, the top prosecutor for that office, is also siding with Kidd. Wilson and Kidd do have a legal basis for their arguments. South Carolina is one of several states that has two self-defense provisions. One known as the Castle Doctrine authorizes occupants to use deadly force against intruders. Recently, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that this provision could not apply to fellow occupants of the home, in a case involving roommates, although that ruling was since withdrawn and the case is being re-heard this week. The Stand Your Ground law contains a separate provision that authorizes deadly force in self-defense against grave bodily harm or death in another place “where he has a right to be.” Prosecutors are arguing that neither of these laws permit one occupant of a home to use deadly force against another. But as Nicholson points out, this interpretation would yield the perverse result that both self-defense provisions explicitly exempt domestic abusers when they perpetrate violence within their own home.
The Post and Courier, which originally reported prosecutors’ position, has been doing a series on domestic violence over the past few months, in which it found that women are dying at a rate of one every 12 days from domestic abuse in South Carolina, a state “awash in guns, saddled with ineffective laws and lacking enough shelters for the battered … a state where the deck is stacked against women trapped in the cycle of abuse.” More than 70 percent of those who kill their spouse had “multiple prior arrests on those charges” and the majority spent just days in jail.
It is in that context that the Post and Courier gave front page treatment to another strike against domestic victims in Stand Your Ground laws, even as those who engage in what many consider vigilante killings are protected by the law. The man granted immunity for killing an innocent bystander, Shannon Anthony Scott, reportedly had a sign posted in his window that read, “Fight Crime – Shoot First.”
Lee, the victim in Jones’ case, had previously been arrested when “a woman said he smashed her flower pot and shattered her bedroom window with a rock during a fit of rage” and had a prior conviction for property a property crime.
Jones said she feared for her life. And those like her who defend themselves against domestic abuse shouldn’t need Stand Your Ground laws to raise a claim of self-defense. Most states, including South Carolina, have longstanding court precedent that permits individuals to raise claims of self-defense in cases where their life is threatened. And those common law claims are one of the reasons many opponents argue that the expansive protection of Stand Your Ground laws is not needed, and gives those who turn to force too much legal cover. But one of the demonstrated flaws of Stand Your Ground laws is that their imposition has been arbitrary, and allowed immunity in many more cases involving white shooters and black victims. In cases in which women have invoked Stand Your Ground laws, an MSNBC analysis found that women invoking the Stand Your Ground defense against white men succeeded in only about 2.6 percent of cases (2.9 percent of the woman was also white). The disparity of Stand Your Ground cases came to national attention with the case of Marissa Alexander, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail for firing a warning shot against her alleged abuser. She was denied Stand Your Ground immunity.
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