My Lords, I added my name to these amendments because I feel strongly that we are not picking up domestic abuse early enough in the process. Part of that is a failure to identify and become aware of the forms of abusive behaviour for what they are. One of the most important aspects of the break-up of a relationship is the effect on children, as they can be terribly damaged through that process. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, has given us a moving description of her experiences, and I pay tribute to all those who have written to me for and against these amendments. I respect what they say.
My strong feeling is that by the time domestic abuse cases get to the courts, views are already polarised, resentments are deep-seated and entrenched, and an intensely adversarial legal system is in play. Anything not proscribed by law seems to be fair game, and the outcomes are all too often a matter of sweeping up the broken fragments of family relationships as tidily as possible.
We know that one of the problems is parental alienation. I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said; her experience is far and away ahead of mine. One of the reasons it is not picked up at an early enough stage is the absence of an identity that would trigger intervention and appropriate support long before matters came to the formal attention of the police or
the jurisdiction of the courts. We know that this is one of the reasons why certain domestic abuse instances are not recorded at all. I acknowledge that the spectrum of such abusive behaviour is enormous, labyrinthine and often a matter of controversy among experts, but signposting this for earlier intervention seems an unassailable point.
I have seen, read and listened to objections to the term “parental alienation”, but lack of definition or labelling—or, for that matter, the awareness that goes with that—does not make the problem cease to exist. It is quite clear that it does. As I just said, I see as one of the problems the nature of the judicial and adversarial process that must be dealt with. I make no criticism of the judiciary, which has to pick its way through enormously complex issues and try to find the best way forward for the parents and particularly the children. It concerns me that, if we do not have a definition, the abuses that have been described and the excuses, particularly of male partners against female partners that the female is indulging in parental alienation of children, will not go away or in some way become less likely.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, suggests that parental alienation is readily identifiable. I cannot speak to that but, from my own observations, I agree. From what I have seen from many who have written to me, it is an identifiable condition. I appreciate that it is complex and multifaceted, but I think we all know, on a results basis, what it means in practice.
This is not just a definition for lawyers and the courts of when things have got to that terrible stage of events when everybody has dug themselves into their positions and every sort of lever and form of manipulation is being used in the cause by one side or the other, but a definition for everybody—particularly upstream of those situations where, as the Domestic Homicide Review has identified, available signs indicated that there were problems which could and should have been picked up. That keeps cropping up. I believe the same is true for parental alienation, as a component in what is quite clearly a larger pattern of abuse.
That is why I support these amendments—primarily because children are caught in the middle here. They are being used as part of the process of leveraging some sort of advantage by one partner against the other. That must stop. It must be identified as offensive, save in circumstances where it is demonstrated that it is being done with the best interests of the child unequivocally in mind—for instance, where there is clear evidence of physical or other sorts of abuse of that nature and something must be done. That is why I support these amendments and have put my name to them.
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