My Lords, in Committee, we heard the very moving testimony of the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, whose children were abducted by their father and kept in Germany with very little contact between them and their mother. It appears that, during that separation, the father turned the children against her. It is a shocking and upsetting case of parental abduction. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her campaigning work on parental abduction. A friend of mine in Oslo, who has shared custody, is having the relationship between him and his son poisoned by the mother.
As my noble friend Lady Brinton said, such behaviour is already covered by Clause 1(3)(c) and (e) and subsection (5) of the Bill as it stands in a way that economic abuse is not. Parental alienation amounts to controlling or coercive behaviour and psychological or emotional abuse. It includes, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, has said, conduct directed at another person—for example, the victim’s child.
As the noble Baroness said in Committee, using children as weapons in a war by one parent against the other can equally apply to mothers seeking to alienate fathers as to fathers seeking to alienate mothers. It can inflict damage on both parent and child. I fundamentally disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that this a gendered issue.
In Committee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who has a wealth of experience, said that it is important to leave discretion over contact and parental alienation to the judges. She reinforced that this afternoon. As she said, there are two types of case: one where a child witnesses abuse and turns against the perpetrator, and the other, where there is a malicious attempt to turn a child against a parent. Abusive behaviour turns children against abusers.
As with many areas of domestic abuse, the issues here are complex, and there are both advantages and disadvantages to the noble Baroness’s amendment. In Committee, my noble friend Lady Brinton quoted from a Ministry of Justice report which cites:
“Fears of false allegations of parental alienation are clearly a barrier to victims of abuse telling the courts about their experiences.”
The domestic abuse commissioner-designate has talked about
“the potential for the idea of ‘parental alienation’ to be weaponised by perpetrators of domestic abuse to silence their victims within the Family Court.”
The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, said that the justice system needs to be better equipped to deal with these issues. As my noble friend Lady Brinton said, the House will consider in Amendment 44 whether there should be mandatory training, so that magistrates and judges at all levels might be better trained in this and other areas of domestic abuse. I accept that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, thinks that the existing training is adequate but, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, we believe that there should be changes to the training of the judiciary, rather than
“behaviour deliberately designed to damage the relationship of a child of the parent and the other parent”
being listed as part of the definition of domestic abuse in the Bill. For these reasons, we do not support the amendment.