PEEPSA (Prevent Educate Eradicate Post Separation Abuse)
06/07/2025
The Rt Hon Josh Fenton Glynn MP
Dr Marie Tidball MP
Sarah Sackman KC MP
Dame Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales
Claire Waxman OBE, Victims’ Commissioner for London
Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England
Dear Mr Fenton Glynn, Dr Tidball, Ms Sackman, Dame Jacobs, Ms Waxman, and Dame de Souza,
I hope this message finds you all well.
First, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude for all the hard work you have done, particularly in raising awareness about the Family Court system and its horrendous shortcomings. Marie, your support for Claire Throssell’s campaign with Women’s Aid, especially the Child First campaign, has been invaluable. Thank you for leading the debate on this matter and striving to create meaningful change within the law and the legal system, particularly in addressing the presumption of contact at all costs with both parents. Josh, I appreciate your efforts in Parliament to highlight these pressing issues and for your willingness to listen and work alongside Marie in tackling the dangers of these presumption of contact laws.
I feel compelled to bring to your attention the harrowing realities of the Family Court system that many survivors confront daily. As someone with lived experience and a national peer support group, I can share invaluable insights from those navigating this difficult terrain.
Recent findings from a Women’s Aid report show that since 2015, 19 children have tragically lost their lives due to unsafe court-sanctioned contact, bringing the total to 67 over the past 30 years. This number does not even include Sara Sharif, which would raise it to 68 children murdered. If the government is serious about halving violence against women and children in a decade, it must urgently scrutinize the Family Court system and post-separation abuse.
Every year, over 50,000 private family law child custody cases pass through the courts, and many of these unnecessarily turn into public law cases. When you add those numbers, it totals over 100,000 cases annually between both private and public law. Recent statistics from Kaleidoscopic UK emphasize the urgency: over 70% of cases going through family court child arrangement proceedings involve domestic abuse. This is an area that desperately needs our attention.
One of the most concerning issues is that mothers are often not allowed to express love to their children due to the restrictive "contract of expectations" they are forced to sign. Many have reported being told they cannot say “I love you” during visitations, which further exacerbates the emotional trauma they and their co survivor children experience. Also these mothers were usually the primary carers to the children from birth, making it incredibly heartbreaking and damaging.
Additionally, the lack of training among social workers is alarming. They are supposed to be the eyes and ears of the family court, in child arrangement proceedings, but a damming BBC documentary last year revealed that one-third of social workers have zero training in domestic abuse, with two-thirds receiving only between 1 to 20 hours of training during their degrees. This lack of preparation leaves them ill-equipped to identify and address post-separation abuse effectively. Despite the Domestic Abuse Act of 2021 acknowledging that victims can be ex-partners and that children should be recognized as victims in their own right, this knowledge often fails to translate into practice.
Outdated misogynistic practices continue to persist, and the dangers of the presumption of contact remain, often leading to children being placed with perpetrators or taken into care. When mothers disclose child sexual abuse or domestic abuse, they are frequently silenced and accused of parental alienation—a concept that has been widely condemned including by the United Nations. Furthermore, the pathologization of mothers reporting domestic abuse has become a significant issue, with their trauma responses misunderstood and labelled as mental health disorders.
This pathologization is often ‘diagnosed’ by unregulated experts, or those who claim to have specialist knowledge in the debunked pseudoscience of parental alienation, a concept which even the UK government does not recognise.
It is crucial to understand what happens to children and mothers when they are forcibly separated, particularly after allegations of parental alienation. Mothers often cannot see their children unless it is under a family assistance order, or similar orders, where they may be forced to accept blame for emotional abuse, put under an intense microscope, forced to admit that they have emotionally harmed their children. Many are left with the burden of paying upwards of £3,000 for therapy that is not available on the NHS in order to see their children again. This effectively strips them of their autonomy, finances, and their practical meaningful role as a mother, leaving them and their co survivor children under the control of both the perpetrator and the authorities they must navigate, such as social workers.
When women disclose domestic abuse, they are told than they must drop it, or it will be used against them and that they will be punished if they do not. Meaning they’ll have their children given to perpetrators or put into the care system. Which I see happening.
Evidence of domestic abuse is then not tested, PD12J brushed over and findings of emotional harm made against the safe parent usually mothers, and children subsequently removed.
There is evidence beginning to emerge that mothers and children are attempting and some actually have taken their own lives through this process, or have become significantly ill, unable to work, or function.
This is also an engagement in my opinion of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child UNCRC and also European Convention on Human Rights. Including but not limited to articles, 2, 3, 6 and 8.
I would like to invite you to engage with my peer support group, Sanctuary Through Family Court, which is a national, remote network designed to support mothers facing these very issues. It would be invaluable for you to hear directly from the women involved so that you can take their lived experiences back to Westminster and use this information to inform discussions on the legislation needed to create real change.
Thank you once again for your dedication to this vital work. Your efforts are crucial in advocating for the reforms we desperately need to see.
Warm regards,
Sarah Taylor LLB Hons, BSc Hons, IDVA Qualified.
Founder and Director, PEEPSA