Sky News and the Missing Half of the Family Court Story
By Michael Thompson, Founder of the Falsely Accused Network
Sky News has broadcast a major investigation into what it describes as the failure of the Family Court to protect survivors of domestic abuse.
It is powerful television. It contains deeply troubling accounts from women who say the system failed them. Those experiences deserve to be heard, and genuine victims of domestic abuse, male or female, deserve protection.
But there is a glaring problem. Not one man was featured.
There were no fathers who say they have been falsely accused, and no men who have gone months, sometimes years, without seeing their children while disputed allegations are litigated. There were no male victims of domestic abuse. For a documentary examining the failures of the Family Court, an enormous part of the Family Court experience is simply missing.
Allegation is not the same thing as fact
A person can allege domestic abuse. The accused person can deny it. Police may investigate it. A court may be asked to determine it. These are different stages, and an allegation does not become a proven fact because it is serious or repeated. Equally, a police decision to take no further action does not establish that an allegation was false. Both principles matter.
Yet much of the public debate operates with only half of this equation: the danger of failing to believe a genuine victim. There is another danger. What happens when we act on an allegation that is not true? The consequences for an innocent parent, and above all for their children, can be devastating.
False allegations are not a fiction invented by disgruntled fathers. The Crown Prosecution Service has specific guidance on allegedly false allegations of rape and domestic abuse, and on offences such as perverting the course of justice. That guidance rightly demands great caution before anyone is judged to have lied.
That is exactly the nuance this debate requires. Some allegations are true. Some are false. Some are exaggerated or substantially disputed. In some cases there is not enough evidence for anyone outside the proceedings to say responsibly what happened. The Family Court's extraordinarily difficult job is working out which is which while protecting children from harm. You would barely know that dilemma existed from watching this investigation.
"Here we go again"? That isn't what we see
Sky gave a prominent platform to Dr Adrienne Barnett, a former family law barrister of 30 years. Her claim was stark: when a mother raises abuse, the courts "aren't interested". Judges, she suggested, hear so much about domestic abuse that their reaction is "here we go again".
It is a striking soundbite. It is also a deeply misleading picture of how the Family Court operates today.
Allegations of domestic abuse are not ignored. They sit at the centre of the process. The C1A form exists to record them. Cafcass safeguarding letters screen for them before the first hearing. Practice Direction 12J requires courts to consider them at every stage. The Court of Appeal in Re H-N and others [2021] EWCA Civ 448 set out detailed guidance on how they must be approached, including coercive and controlling behaviour. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 bans alleged abusers from cross-examining their accusers in person. That is not a system that "isn't interested".
In our experience, the problem is often the reverse. Every week we hear from parents whose contact was suspended, or reduced to supervised sessions, at an early interim hearing before any finding was made. Some wait months for a hearing that never comes. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner's own research found a fact-finding hearing in just 4% of cases. An allegation can shape a child's life for months, even years, without ever being tested.
Dr Barnett's account also rests on one assumption: that the mother's allegation is true. She describes a mother reporting abuse and a court failing to act. She does not describe the parent who is wrongly accused, the cases where both parents make allegations, or the allegation that cannot be proved either way.
A system that dismissed allegations would be dangerous. So would a system that acts on them untested. Neither protects children.
Laura's case: feeling is not the same as finding
At the heart of Sky's investigation is "Laura", a British woman convicted of child abduction after taking her child to Northern Cyprus. Sky reported that she is now serving a sentence of three and a half years.
Throughout the report, viewers were repeatedly told that Laura felt she had been abused. Sky reported that police investigated at least one allegation of rape, but viewers were not told what came of it. Was anyone charged? Did the Family Court hold a fact-finding hearing, and if so, what did it find? What did the judge who sentenced her say about her reasons for leaving?
These are not minor details. A criminal court convicted Laura and imposed a substantial prison sentence for removing a child from the country. Viewers deserved to know what that court heard and why it reached its decision. Instead, they were given her feelings and left to fill the gaps themselves.
Let us be clear: the absence of a conviction against her former partner does not mean abuse did not happen. Much domestic abuse never reaches a criminal court. But investigative journalism does not simply relay one party's account. It tests it. If the courts got this wrong, show us the evidence. If her allegations were never examined, say so. If they were examined and rejected, viewers deserve to know that too.
There is also a child in this story. A child was taken to another country and separated from their other parent. According to Sky's own report, that child is now in care, living with neither parent. Whatever the truth of the allegations, that is a devastating outcome, and surely one of the most important questions in the case. How did it happen? What does it mean for the child? Sky's report did not explore it at all.
Presenting how someone feels, without the evidential context, is not investigation. It is advocacy.
Male victims have disappeared from the story
According to the Office for National Statistics, an estimated 1.5 million men and 2.2 million women experienced domestic abuse in England and Wales in the year ending March 2025. The ONS data also shows that women are more likely to experience the most severe patterns of partner abuse. We do not dispute that. But one and a half million men is not a rounding error.
Yet Sky produced a lengthy investigation into domestic abuse and the Family Court without a single male victim. Nobody needs to minimise violence against women to recognise that something is wrong with that picture. Domestic abuse is no less serious when its victim is male. A frightened father matters. An abused husband matters. A father wrongly separated from his children matters. And children who lose a safe and loving parent matter enormously.
When the accusation itself becomes a weapon
This is one of the most uncomfortable questions in family justice, and it desperately needs serious journalism.
Domestic abuse can continue after separation, and court proceedings can be misused by abusive individuals. But allegations can also be weaponised. Both propositions can be true at the same time.
Imagine designing a Family Court capable of dealing with both situations. Believe every allegation automatically, and innocent parents and children suffer catastrophic injustice. Dismiss allegations too readily, and genuine victims and children are placed in danger. That is the real problem. It is difficult, it is uncomfortable, and it does not fit a television narrative of obvious victims and obvious villains. That is precisely why journalists should investigate it.
What about alienating behaviours?
Cafcass itself recognises alienating behaviours: circumstances in which a child's resistance to spending time with a parent may result from psychological manipulation by the other parent. Cafcass also rightly warns that claims of alienation can be used as a counter-allegation where genuine abuse has occurred.
Reality is complicated. A child might reject a parent because that parent has abused them. A child might reject a perfectly safe parent because another adult has damaged that relationship. Telling the two apart is hugely important. Sky did not discuss it.
Even the statistics require scrutiny
The Domestic Abuse Commissioner's 2025 research, Everyday Business, reported domestic abuse as present in 87% of the closed Family Court files it examined. That sounds extraordinary, until you read the methodology. Domestic abuse was counted as present wherever a party or professional had raised it as an issue. That is not the same as a court determining that abuse occurred in 87% of cases, and the distinction is fundamental.
The same research found cross- or counter-allegations in 22% of files, and a fact-finding hearing in just 4%. There is an issue crying out for investigation. What happens when both parents accuse each other? How does a judge identify the victim? What happens when allegations are never determined? And what safeguards exist for somebody wrongly accused?
It is fair to note that the same research found many cases ended in unsupervised contact, and campaigners cite this as evidence that courts minimise abuse. That is a legitimate debate. But it cannot be had honestly while untested allegations and judicial findings are treated as the same thing.
The law doesn't simply say contact at any cost
Sky also discussed the Government's plan to repeal the statutory presumption of parental involvement, now contained in the Courts and Tribunals Bill. There is an important debate to be had about that reform. But the existing law should not be caricatured. The presumption does not apply where there is evidence that a parent's involvement would put the child at risk of harm, and the child's welfare remains paramount.
There is a legitimate argument that the presumption has contributed to an excessively pro-contact culture. But that is an argument. It is not the same as the law saying that contact overrides children's safety.
Transparency must work in every direction
Sky understandably examined concerns about Family Court secrecy, and there are legitimate questions about accountability in family justice. But that story is changing. Accredited journalists and legal bloggers can now attend Family Court proceedings and, subject to Transparency Orders and strict protections for children's identities, report considerably more than before.
If we want greater transparency, and I certainly do, let's have it. Let's investigate cases where genuine victims weren't protected. Let's also investigate cases where allegations were never substantiated and a parent nevertheless lost their child. Let's investigate wrongly accused mothers and wrongly accused fathers, male victims, alienating behaviours, and failures by Cafcass, social services, solicitors, experts and judges wherever credible evidence exists. That would be transparency.
We will not attack the women in this programme
The Falsely Accused Network will not speculate about whether the individual women in Sky's investigation are telling the truth. We do not have the evidence to make those judgments. Some of the allegations described are extremely serious, and anybody genuinely subjected to rape, coercive control or domestic violence deserves protection and justice.
Our criticism is directed at something else: the complete absence of the other side of the Family Court crisis. You cannot properly investigate family justice while excluding an entire category of people who say the system has failed them.
Fathers are not an inconvenient footnote
Every week, organisations such as ours hear from people whose lives have been turned upside down by allegations. Some are terrified. Some haven't seen their children in months. Some face police investigations and Family Court proceedings at the same time. Some vehemently deny the allegations against them. Some are themselves reporting abuse.
Their stories do not prove that every accused person is innocent. But neither does an allegation prove anybody guilty. That principle seems increasingly hard to say without being placed on one "side" of a gender war. We reject that completely.
There shouldn't be two sides
Protecting genuine victims and protecting falsely accused people are not opposing causes. They depend on exactly the same thing: a justice system capable of finding the truth.
A system that automatically dismisses allegations is dangerous. A system that automatically accepts them is dangerous too. A functioning Family Court must test evidence, distinguish allegation from established fact, identify genuine risk and make decisions centred on the welfare of the child. Sometimes that means protecting a child from an abusive father. Sometimes it means protecting a child from an abusive mother. Sometimes it means recognising that allegations have not been proved. And sometimes it means recognising that a child is being denied a healthy relationship with a perfectly safe parent.
The new President of the Family Division, Sir Stephen Cobb, told Sky that a change in culture is needed. We agree. But the culture change must be towards finding the truth, not towards a new set of assumptions.
Sky told an important story. It didn't tell the whole story.
Women deserve to be heard. Men deserve to be heard. Genuine victims deserve protection. People accused of abuse deserve a fair process. And above everything else, children deserve decisions based on evidence rather than ideology, assumption or gender.
The Family Court desperately needs scrutiny. Let's have it. But let's scrutinise all of it.
Michael ThompsonFounder, Falsely Accused Network, England & Wales
www.falselyaccusednetwork.co.uk · support@falselyaccusednetwork.co.uk · 020 4538 8788
Link to sky news article and documentary
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