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Navigating family-law system ‘relentless’ – study

Research on the Irish family-law system has found what Women’s Aid describes as a “systemic blind spot” on the impact of domestic abuse.

The study, commissioned by Women’s Aid, was carried out by Trinity College Dublin and UCC, examines how adult and child victim-survivors of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) experience the Irish family-law system in guardianship, custody and access (GCA) cases.

The authors find the Irish family-law system, as a whole, “is not sufficiently DVA-informed or responsive”.

‘Secondary re-victimisation’

They say that adult victim-survivors’ experiences of family law for guardianship, custody and access, in the context of domestic violence and abuse, were “overwhelmingly negative”.

“The vast majority of female victim-survivors indicated that the journey through the family-law courts was experienced as traumatic and resulted in secondary re-victimisation over and above the abuse inflicted by their abusers,” it states.

The report also finds that a lack of appropriate mechanisms for supporting the voices of children being heard leads to unsafe contact with abusive parents.

The study also refers to “a deep lack of understanding” by professionals in the system of DVA – including coercive control.

Length of proceedings

The authors say that ‘relentless’ was one of the terms used most often by adult victim-survivors to describe their experience of the family-law system.

Interviewees cited several contributing factors – including the length of proceedings, repeated court attendance, engaging with multiple different professionals, and having to attend for court for issues that could have been resolved outside a courtroom.

The report draws from court observations, surveys, interviews, and focus groups with children, aged-out minors, adults, domestic-violence practitioners, health, social-care and legal professionals, and judges.

Compulsory training

It calls for compulsory training on domestic violence for all professionals working in family law – including judges, legal practitioners, court staff, assessors, and mediators.

Another recommendation is for the “urgent reform” of civil legal aid to include:

• Increasing the income threshold and/or introducing a graduated payments scheme for those just above the limit, and
• Incentivising legal-aid work by increasing renumeration rates for solicitors taking on this work.

The report also recommends a “high-level strategy” to improve co-ordination, communication, and co-operation between family courts and criminal courts.

System ‘not responsive’

Women’s Aid chief executive Sarah Benson described the research as “very difficult but required reading” for anyone involved in the family-justice system.

“Even where there are some examples of informed and understanding practices among some key individuals, this is completely inadequate when the system itself is not attuned and responsive to the tactics and impacts of domestic abuse post-separation,” she stated.

She added that the organisation was concerned about the lack of comprehensive training and understanding of domestic violence and the impact of abuse on victim-survivors at every level of the family-law system.

“In many instances, when women raised legitimate safety concerns for their children, they were often inappropriately accused of engaging in the highly contested concept of ‘parental alienation’, while the possibility of DVA as a reasonable concern was not meaningfully considered,” Benson said.