Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other transparency news.
MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY etc
The Observer ran a piece in early May, Sara Sharif: what the judges knew (2 May 2025) in which Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers reviewed in depth the court papers made available by the order of Williams J, as varied by the Court of Appeal in Tickle and Summers -v- BBC, PA and others [2025] EWCA Civ 42, to investigate the various family court decisions made in relation to the care of Sara Sharif, prior to her murder in the family home in 2023. Together with a timeline of the whole case, the article considers what material was available to the courts when and what missed opportunities there might have been to intervene. (We provided comprehensive coverage of the case in relation to the naming of the judges involved, eg in our January roundup as well as a number of individual posts.)
The Observer – Child abuse is never above the law – not even if you’re a family court judge (21 May) and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – Teacher and judge who ran abusive household cannot be named, rules high court (21 May) both ran stories on the judgment published as A LA v X & Y and Others (No 5: Transparency Order) [2025] EWFC 140 where Mrs Justice Theis refused applications by the media to name the parents who had been found to have physically and emotionally abused two of their five adopted children. The media had argued the public interest in identifying the parents, one of whom was a teacher who stood as a candidate for right-wing political parties and the other was a barrister and part-time judge.
The BBC published a distressing report of a Review after woman took decomposing daughter out (2 May 2025), saying ‘An elderly woman found pushing her dead daughter around a shopping centre in a wheelchair in east London has prompted a safeguarding board to reassess how it handles some cases’. The pair, identified pseudonymously as Jodie, in her 50s, and Janet, in her 70s, had become known to Waltham Borough Council after being evicted from their home but concerns raised by a council officer were not investigated. In 2023 police officers stopped Janet and discovered Jodie underneath a red coat, in a state of “heavy decomposition”. A subsequent inquest heard how the two had been sharing a flat in Leyton when Jodie died, and her mother ‘couldn’t bear to part with her’. Waltham Forest Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) was told to update and clarify its referral and escalation processes.
The BBC (and others) reported that Constance Marten cross-examined by partner Mark Gordon (8 May 2025) on the continuing retrial of the runaway couple for the manslaughter by gross negligence of their baby Victoria. Having sacked his barrister, Mark Gordon was able to cross-examine his partner after submitting his questions to the judge and receiving approval. He thus elicited from her a version of events broadly supportive of their defence, without giving evidence himself or exposing himself to cross-examination by the prosecution. Many of the reports of the trial focused on the evidence of Marten’s difficult relationship with her family, who opposed her relationship with Gordon.
The Times (£) reported on Woman cleared of inducing illegal abortion at 26 weeks in lockdown (9 May 2025) saying Nicola Packer, 45, had ‘cried after she was acquitted by a jury at Isleworth crown court in southwest London of unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing with the intent to procure a miscarriage’. In November 2020 Packer, then 41, had taken the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol, which were prescribed via a remote consultation under temporary pandemic provisions allowing at-home abortions for those up to ten weeks pregnant. Not realising she was pregnant, Packer said she assumed her symptoms were due to the onset of perimenopause. After taking it, she delivered a small but fully formed foetus at home and took it to a hospital. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said the trial showed how ‘outdated and harmful’ was the current abortion law. The BBC also covered the story: Woman accused of illegal abortion found not guilty (8 May 2025).
Wales Online reported We’re naming police inspector who met sex worker and fled without paying (10 May 2025), recounting reporter Conor Gogarty’s success in disputing an anonymity order which would have prevented the paper naming a police inspector who met a sex worker and then ‘abandoned’ her without paying. Justin Ellerton, who had been a Llanelli neighbourhood inspector, resigned from Dyfed-Powys Police after admitting gross misconduct with a ‘known sex worker.’ The decision to anonymise Ellerton and withhold his rank had been made by a former chief constable of the force, who was now chairing its misconduct hearings, but after a legal challenge by WalesOnline, Dyfed-Powys Police overturned the decision. Gogarty compares this force’s willingness to correct its error with the refusal by another force, South Wales Police, in another type of misconduct case.
A BBC report entitled ‘I was drugged and raped by my husband for years’ (13 May 2025) told the story of Kate (not her real name) whose husband one evening confessed to her that, for years, he had been drugging her and then raping her. This explained occasions when she had woken to find him having unconsensual sex with her and then pretended to have a problem for which she had been supportive in finding help. In fact he had simply been taking advantage of her. He begged her not to go to the police, but after she suffered physical and psychological illness, her sister told the police. Though investigated, he was not initially charged, until a CPS review decided the original decision not to prosecute had been flawed. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and given a lifelong restraining order. ‘Three years on, Kate is trying to rebuild her life with her children’, says the report. The case bears uncomfortable similarities to that of Gisèle Pelicot, in France, which we covered in our roundup for December 2024.)
The Guardian reported that Sperm donor who claims he fathered more than 180 children loses custody battle (14 May 2025). This continued the story of Robert Albon, who goes by the pseudonym ‘Joe Donor’, who ‘failed to gain custody of a three-year-old child he had with a Durham woman, who said she was left “broken” and “suicidal” by their encounter’. Albon was named in an earlier judgment, A v B and others [2023] EWFC 333, given by HHJ Jonathan Furness, acting as a Deputy High Court judge, in November 2023 but only published in February 2025, which we wrote on here. This report refers to a more recent hearing given by Poole J in April this year, Re CA & Ors (Children of Unregulated Sperm Donor) [2025] EWFC 130, and published in May. Albon, who the Guardian says ‘has families with a Japanese woman and a Chinese woman he is estranged from, has also fathered dozens of children across South America, Australia and the UK’. Given the need to warn others of the risk of ‘Joe Donor’ and his coercive tactics, it seems odd to wait so long before publishing the judgments.
The BBC reported that MPs vote to allow health staff to opt out of assisted dying process (16 May 2025), with coverage of the further five hours of debate allowed to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (currently at the report stage) which has already been the subject of a good deal of non-parliamentary debate as well as parliamentary committee stage discussion, since its second reading last November.
There was also coverage of the Commons debate in The Times (£) MPs vote on assisted dying bill amendments — as it happened and of its charged emotional atmosphere in The Guardian, with a piece titled MPs opposed to assisted dying criticise ‘distasteful’ Esther Rantzen claims. There were public protests, with shouts and placards on both sides, outside the building.
Prior to the debate there had been disquiet over medical practitioner involvement, with The Times reporting that Sentiment turning against assisted dying bill, MPs claim, saying criticism of the legislation from the Royal College of Psychiatrists had been described as a ‘blow to its foundations’; and Royal College of Physicians joins criticism of assisted dying bill (15 May 2025).
Our coverage of the debate has mainly been focused on judicial oversight of the process, on which Sir James Munby has contributed a number of posts, including most recently ASSISTED DYING: WHAT ROLE FOR THE PANEL? Thoughts on the latest (amended) proposals (3 May 2025). This included an update on the government’s Impact Assessment in relation to the Bill. Another retired Family Division judge, Sir Nicholas Mostyn, has published A Response to Sir James Munby on his Law & Disorder blog. (See also Broadcast coverage below.)
The Times (£) reported that Reforms put child protection in danger, ministers warned (18 May 2025). This discussed a letter to the newspaper from Eileen Munro, emeritus professor of social policy at the LSE and author of The Munro Review of Child Protection, in which she ‘accused ministers of rushing through cost-cutting reforms, under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which ‘risked dismantling vital safeguards and could have “dangerous, unpredictable consequences” as she urged ministers to pause reforms’. In the letter she adds: ‘Particularly alarming is the shift of child protection responsibilities to less-qualified family help workers. Although they offer support, many are not trained to detect hidden abuse such as psychological harm or coercive control.’
The Guardian reported on the Legal aid hack: data from hundreds of thousands of people accessed, says MoJ (19 May 2025). This related to the belated admission by the MOJ that there had been a massive cybersecurity data breach of the online legal aid adminstration system. They had become aware of it on 23 April 2025, but on 16 May discovered that it had been more extensive and involved the loss of data relating to a large number of legal aid applicants. ‘We believe the group has accessed and downloaded a significant amount of personal data from those who applied for legal aid through our digital service since 2010.’ According to the Guardian, ‘Lawyers said they had complained for years about the Legal Aid Agency’s IT system and were concerned that the cyber-attack would leave vulnerable claimants and those briefly represented by a duty solicitor open to exposure and possible blackmail.’
The Observer had an article saying Prospective parents are no longer queuing up to adopt children in care (25 May 2025) in which columnist Martha Gill set out to analyse why there now seemed to be ‘more children in care and fewer people waiting to adopt them’ than in the past. She blamed this in part on the ‘cost of living crisis’ but other factors were also identified. The headline was a little misleading as the numbers of prospective adopters have been dwindling for many years now. The article itself inaccurately suggests that older children are languishing in care, waiting for unknown adopters, whereas in reality, adoption plans are only made by local authorities, and placement orders made, for very young children. A bigger story is perhaps the reduced government funding for adoption support and therapy in England, as explained by the Guardian in ‘It broke my heart’: the adopters forced to return their child to care after struggling alone’ (21 May).
BROADCAST & AUDIO COVERAGE
Law Pod UK had two podcasts offering Reflections on the Assisted Dying Bill: Part 1 (2 May 2025) and Assisted Dying Part 2: Reflections on the Canadian Experience (6 May 2025) in which Alex Ruck Keene KC discusses the Bill with Rosalind English of 1 Crown Office Row and, for part 2, psychiatrist Dr Mona Gupta in Montreal.
BBC Radio 4 broadcast an episode of Currently on The Three Babies Mystery (25 May 2025) in which reporter Sanchia Berg follows and explains the case of baby Elsa, found abandoned in a park in East London on a freezing January night in 2024, and her two siblings previously found abandoned in similar circumstances. Berg’s investigation features rare access to the Family Court, including a helpful interview with a London judge about adoption law, and to the police investigation, raising the question of what has happened to the mother. She also has a moving discussion with the two women who found the older sister six years ago. (We have covered the Baby Elsa case in previous roundups, most recently in February-March 2025.)
LEGAL BLOGGING
In Cross examination of medical experts – exceptional or exceptionally important? (18 May 2025) Lucy Reed KC observed a hearing in a case involving unexplained injuries to a baby, where there was an issue about whether or not cross examination of the medical experts should be permitted. Everyone involved in the case seemed to be in agreement that such cross examination should occur, except the judge, who needed to be persuaded to reconsider a test he had laid down in earlier guidance.
In Child protection and domestic abuse – a legal blogging report from Cardiff Family Court (27 May 2025) Dr Julie Doughty provides an account of attending a recent case management hearing as a legal blogger, with some comment on the context of the recent National Audit Office (NAO) report (covered below) on ‘Improving family court services for children’ which states that Wales has the lowest case duration figures, with average duration of 24 weeks for cases brought by local authorities, half that of London.
RECENT COMMENTARY
DAT Green in Prospect asked Why is it easier to access US court documents than UK court documents? (2 May 2025). This was about rule 5.4C of the Civil Procedure Rules of England and Wales, which provides a limited right of the public to court documents, and which Green compares unfavourably with the far more generous access available in the USA where online case documents are filed on PACER. ‘Here you will not just see the final judgments in the cases but the submissions of the parties and their witness statements, as well as the interim and final orders of the court.’ Part of the problem in our own jurisdiction is the lack of electronic access generally, even for the courts and professionals, let alone court observers. ‘Another part of the problem is attitudinal. The heady notion of “open justice” often only means that a stranger has the possibility of sitting on a plastic chair at the back of a court room, to hear a case where the only public information is the names of the parties and the court room, but not the legal issues or the evidence.’
Becket Chambers had a piece, Clarity and guidance on parental alienation/ alienating behaviours – The Family Justice Council (8 May 2025) in which Lavinia Glover discusses and explains the publication last December of the FJC’s Guidance on responding to allegations of alienating behaviours. The guidance focuses on informing the court and professionals in the wider family justice system as to how allegations of Alienating Behaviours should be considered and responded to, bearing in mind (as it makes clear) that the term ‘parental alienation syndrome’ has no evidential basis, and is a ‘harmful pseudo-science that can be exploited within family litigation’. (We covered the guidance at the time: Allegations of alienating behaviour – important new guidance published, 11 Dec 2024.)
Garden Court Chambers had a piece, Placement of children abroad: consultation and consent (15 May 2025) in which Laura Williams discusses the President’s latest guidance on public law children cases with an international element, in the context of recent cases involving the placement of children abroad under the Hague 1996 Convention and in particular, the requirements of Article 33 of the Hague Convention on child protection (1996). A fuller version of the same piece previously appeared on Local Government Lawyer (7 March 2025).
A more complete offering from Garden Court Chambers was its Overview of the Family Justice Council Guidance on Neurodiversity (15 May 2025) in which Will Bulman provides an explainer of the FJC guidance (which we covered in our January roundup.)
NEW JUDGMENTS OF INTEREST
other than referred to above
Re A (Appeal: Findings of Fact) [2025] EWHC 1279 (Fam)
In April, Mr Justice Hayden heard an application for permission to appeal a fact-finding hearing in private law – although the notice of the application had been sent into court three years earlier. This ‘extraordinary delay’ was due to Bromley Family Court being unable to find the recording of the 2022 hearing and then there being confusion over paying for a transcript. Before that, apparently, nine judges had heard the case at various stages over five years. Although Hayden J’s conclusions have not had any impact on the welfare decision that had been made for the children, it is helpful to read his analysis on the importance of being very specific when there is a range of abuse allegations.
J v K & Another [2025] EWHC 1268 (Fam)
This is an unusual case of an adoption of a 17-year old boy by the man who’d been his social parent throughout his life. The boy had been conceived by anonymous donor insemination. The boy’s mother, the local authority, and most importantly, the boy himself, wanted the adoption order. Although the adoptive father had successfully applied for a child arrangements order by consent about ten years ago, he’d been (wrongly) advised that he couldn’t apply for adoption. Fortunately, he was given accurate advice before the boy turned 18.
A Local Authority v M & Others [2025] EWHC 1132 (Fam)
The parents in this case had agreed with each other to voluntarily give up their unplanned baby for adoption (an unusual situation but one that is governed by several sections in the Adoption and Children Act 2002). The issue was that they had not notified their own families of the birth, apart from one grandparent, nor considered them as adopters. The local authority sought the court’s guidance on this. Mr Justice Cusworth concluded that the local authority should notify a number of members of the extended family about the baby and ask if any would put themselves forward as carers. This was despite the child having been in an early permanence placement for six months since birth, supported by the parents as the best plan.
A Local Authority v LB & Others [2025] EWHC 1264 (Fam)
We’ve used a BAILII link for this judgment as can’t find it on TNA but it’s an important one about using the inherent jurisdiction to deprive a young person of their liberty. The Deputy High Court Judge did not make that order, as applied for, because the local authority had not presented any evidence that they had first tried to find the young person a placement in secure accommodation under s 25 Children Act 1989, nor could they successfully argue that they required a DoL order for educational supervision. The application wasn’t dismissed, but adjourned, as there were ongoing developments regarding the young person absconding.
GM v VB [2025] EWHC 857 (Fam)
In this case where a father had been charged with a number of offences of violence and the mother had submitted allegations of domestic violence and coercive control, a fact-finding hearing was listed in early 2025. The father was applying for contact or shared care of three young children. However, the case was transferred to a different judge in Reading Family Court, HHJ Tolson, who decided that the fact finding was unnecessary. He made an order for unsupervised video contact and for an independent social worker to form a plan to introduce direct contact. The mother appealed on all these points. Mrs Justice Judd decided that although HHJ Tolson had taken the evidence of violence very seriously, he had been wrong to assume that that the question of whether or not the father should be able to have some form of face to face contact with the children in the medium and longer term was no longer seriously in issue. There was still a gulf between what the mother alleged and what the father admitted. The appeal was upheld and the case will be allocated to another judge.
RC v SP [2025] EWFC 123 and [2025] EWFC 124
These two judgments relate to a private law dispute between a mother who wanted the case publicised and a father who didn’t. The first judgment is on the decision by the Deputy High Court Judge to extend the child’s anonymity until he/she is 18 and the second is about awarding costs against the father. Journalists were involved because the mother has a public profile and she was alleging coercive reproductive control, in quite unusual circumstances. A standard Transparency Order (TO) says that journalists and legal bloggers can report either after the hearing or after the whole case has concluded – but the child must not be identifiable. The TO normally expires when the child turns 18, so they might later be identified if there was still interest by then. In this case, however, it appears that the whole TO expired at the end of the case, so there was no continuing restriction on identifying the child as having been involved in family court proceedings. Undertaking the balancing exercise between Articles 8 and 10, the judge concluded that the TO should be extended to the date the child turned 18, to protect his privacy. In older case law, this would have been achieved by extending the protection of section 97 that expires at the end of the case. In the second judgment, the mother was applying for a costs order against the father after he had withdrawn his applications foe PR and contact. Each party (the mother and father) had run up about half a million pounds in costs (including nearly £50,000 for an independent social worker). The judge awarded 75% of the mother’s costs against the father, who was said to be very wealthy and contributing a high amount in child support. We haven’t seen any media coverage of the case, so this does seem to be an example of the media not finding enough to publish without names and faces.
Sheffield City Council v The Mother & Ors [2025] EWFC 116 (B)
Unusually in this case, the judge made orders for contact following placement orders (section 26 Adoption and Children Act 2002) in respect of two young children, so that they would maintain relationships with their birth parents and three older siblings. Placement orders were made for children aged three and four; thr three older children were in long term foster care. The judgment is very long, partly because the parents disputed most of the factual allegations of physical abuse and partly because the needs and views of the five children varied and had to be considered individually. The oldest child, who wanted to go home, had his own lawyers. The care applications had resulted from the middle child telling his school about being beaten by his parents and how frightened he was. Evidence emerged that all the children were at risk of significant harm because the parents had fixed ideas about what they called ‘punishment’ but what the judge called ‘repeated assaults’. As well, the parents continually lied about the assaults, causing emotional harm to the children, and didn’t keep up health appointments. The judge sadly concluded that there was no imminent prospect of the children being safely rehabilitated with them.
M v F [2025] EWFC 114 (B)
We’re including this case from Oxford Family Court simply because the judgment describes what sounds like truly oppressive behaviour toward witnesses by a named solicitor-advocate, so that the judge expressed herself as seriously concerned about how unclear and aggressive his cross examination was and how distressed this made the mother and confused it made the Cafcass officer. The father’s own evidence was described by the judge as inconsistent and lacking any credibility. All the allegations against him of violence and coercion were found proven, with the mother and their six-year-old child needing protection from him.
Re K [2025] EWFC 139 (B)
This judgment by HHJ Hesford at Crewe Family Court is an interesting analysis of what can and can’t be done in a situation by the court and professionals when one parent is irrationally denying contact to the other. While the judgment avoids too much detail about the mother, the inclusion of a good deal of discussion of evidence by psychologist Dr Jaime Craig indicates the complexity of the issues. The judge says that her judgment should be read in conjunction with the fact-finding which we think is Re K [2024] EWFC 448 (B) (which isn’t linked on TNA and doesn’t even appear on BAILII).
OTHER TRANSPARENCY etc NEWS
HMCTS published guidance on its Remote Participation Approach (9 May 2025) explaining how it supports remote court and tribunal hearings to improve access to justice. Although remote participation is not suitable in all cases, where it is possible ‘we will continue to support, enable and deliver the provision for people to participate and observe in court and tribunal hearings remotely, without the need to be physically present in the same room as other participants. By enabling hearings to be observed remotely too, we are upholding the principle of open justice.’ Their approach is to primarily focus on maximising the benefits of remote hearings, they say, but they admit that currently ‘we do not routinely collect consistent data cross jurisdictions about the method of hearing for cases’ and ‘remote participation is applied inconsistently throughout England and Wales’. To improve the situation, they intend to commission academic research into remote hearings including on the impact of digital disadvantage.
The Family Justice Council (FJC) published long awaited Guidance on Covert recordings in Family Law proceedings concerning children (15 May 2025), with a foreword by Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division. The guidance, he said, ‘explores the issues and examines the consequences arising from the use of covert recordings by private individuals and sets out guidance that we hope will lead to greater consistency in approach.’ We wrote about the guidance itself in more detail here: Can secret recordings be used as evidence in court? There is also an explainer by Louisa Adams on the Becket Chambers blog.
The President, Sir Andrew McFarlane, gave a speech on ‘The Road Ahead: The Journey So Far’ (16 May 2025), speaking at the Resolution Conference 2025 in Birmingham. He offered what he called a ‘whistle-stop tour of where we have come from and where we are going’ in the work of the family courts generally. He said a little bit about transparency, quite a lot about Pathfinder courts, and something (echoing a recent speech by the Master of the Rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos) on the future of the courts and the significance of the Online Procedure Rule Committee (OPRC) with its ultimate promise of a one-stop-shop digital portal for citizens to find a legal solution to any problem. Local Government Lawyer covered one aspect of the speech under the title Senior family judge reaffirms goal of having Family Drug and Alcohol Court in every area (20 May 2025). This referred to the statement by Sir Andrew expressing frustration that there was still a Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in only 20% of areas, and his intention to roll them out nationwide.
The National Audit Office (NAO) published its ‘value for money’ report on Improving family court services for children (HC 877) (21 May 2025), reviewing the government’s approach to improving how public law and private law cases are managed, with a specific focus on improving family justice services for children in England and Wales. The main government bodies it audited were the Ministry of Justice, Department for Education, DfE,HMCTS and Cafcass in England (but not in Wales). It did not cover or evaluate the work of the judiciary. The report finds that, although family courts have recovered better than criminal courts after the covid pandemic, ‘children and families are still waiting too long to have their cases resolved. The statutory time limit to resolve most public law cases within 26 weeks has never been met nationally since it was introduced in 2014, and some open cases are nearly two years old’. Moreover, the various government departments audited ‘do not understand which factors are contributing most to delays, meaning that targeting improvements is difficult’. There are, concludes the report, ‘several barriers that government must tackle to better manage the family justice system, including having good-quality data, a system-wide assessment of the key factors driving poor performance and a better understanding of costs’.
The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons launched an inquiry into Improving family court services for children, after the NAO’s report (above) questioned whether the MoJ, DfE and other bodies involved in the family court system in England and Wales were really managing the system effectively to provide better outcomes for the children and families involved. Based on the NAO’s work, the Committee will take evidence from senior MoJ and DfE officials and representatives from other relevant bodies on topics including:
- Examining if the family court system across England and Wales has capacity to meet current and future demand, including accounting for the needs of different groups within the system;
- Understanding how Departments and other organisations are working towards a whole system approach to improve family courts performance and;
- Asking how the system can deliver an effective and efficient service that also offers value for taxpayers money.
The committee has issued a call for evidence, with a deadline for responses by 9 June 2025.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) embarked on a consultation on its code of practice for services, public functions and associations (20 May 2025), to gather feedback on the changes that it has made to the code following the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16; [2025] 2 WLR 879 that the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 should be interpreted as ‘biological’ sex only. (We wrote about the case itself in our April 2025 roundup.)
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Family Law Week summer conference 2025 will take place at the Cavendish Conference Centre on 8 July 2025. The theme this year is ‘Crossing Borders, Protecting Children, Practice and Principles in International Children Law’. The conference will be chaired by Mani Singh Basi, Managing Editor at Family Law Week, and Barrister at 4PB. For more information see Family Law Week.
FAMILY LAW AND TRANSPARENCY IN OTHER JURISDICTIONS
Canada
SLAW, Canada’s Online Legal Magazine, had a piece, Beyond the Ramp: Why Canada Needs Court Accessibility Co-ordinators (28 May 2025) in which Lauren Howorth, Student Researcher at the National Self-Represented Litigants Project explains why ‘without dedicated institutional roles to oversee and facilitate accessibility in courts, equity will remain aspirational’. This is because:
‘for many disabled people, sameness is not fairness; a trial that proceeds without a microphone for someone with a speech disorder, or a hearing where no accommodations are made for a person with an episodic cognitive disability, may be procedurally correct—but functionally exclusionary.’
The problem is particularly acute for those litigants who represent themselves (SRLs in Canada, LIPs over here) who are also more likely to be involved in family law proceedings.
‘Court Accessibility Coordinators won’t fix every flaw, but they would ensure that when people with disabilities come to court, someone is tasked with listening—early, consistently, and with the authority to act. The burden of access should not rest on those least equipped or resourced to carry it.’
France
The BBC reported that Victims in landmark child abuse trial ask why France doesn’t want to know (25 May 2025). This related to the long-running trial of a retired surgeon, Joel Le Scouarnec, who was found to have sexually abused hundreds of mainly child victims in Vannes, in southern Brittany. Although there was a lot of press coverage of the case, and some victims have shed their anonymity in order to speak about their experience, it seems there has not been the same public reaction or calls for action as, for example, in the case last year of the mass rape of Giselle Pelicot choreographed by her husband. ‘There’s a virtual omertà on this topic globally, but particularly in France. “We simply don’t want to acknowledge it,” Myriam Guedj-Benayoun, a lawyer representing several of Le Scouarnec’s victims, told me.’
Finally…
We have a small favour to ask!
TEN YEARS A CHARITY
The Transparency Project is a registered charity in England and Wales run by volunteers who mostly also have full-time jobs. Although we’ve now been going for a decade, we’re always working to secure extra funding so that we can keep making family justice clearer for all who use the court and work in it.
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