Why ideologues like Joan Smith harm Child Protection

By Michael Thompson, Founder of Falsely Accused Network

As someone who has spent years advocating for parents wrongly accused of abuse, Joan Smith's recent article about the Sara Sharif case represents everything wrong with how these tragic cases get weaponized to push a simplistic ideological agenda.

Link for Joan Smith's article

https://unherd.com/newsroom/sara-sharif-case-reveals-courts-misogyny-blind-spot/

While Sara's death is an unimaginable tragedy that demands serious scrutiny of our family court system, Smith's knee-jerk attribution to judicial misogyny not only misses the mark but actively undermines efforts to protect children.

Through our work at Falsely Accused Network, we've seen countless cases where allegations of abuse are wielded as tactical weapons in custody battles. Smith conveniently ignores this reality, along with the devastating impact false allegations have on children and families. Her article demonstrates precisely the kind of gender-based presumption of guilt that corrupts fair proceedings in family courts.

The selective presentation of facts in Smith's piece is telling. While she breathlessly cites statistics about male perpetrators, she completely omits the documented allegations against Sara's mother, including attempts to burn the child with a lighter and drown her in the bath. This kind of cherry-picking serves an agenda but does nothing to illuminate the real challenges courts face in protecting children.

Having worked with thousands of falsely accused parents, I can attest that Smith's simplistic narrative - that courts systematically favor abusive fathers over protective mothers - bears little resemblance to reality. The truth is that family courts face the nearly impossible task of making life-altering decisions based on limited information, often in cases where both parents have concerning histories.

Smith's misuse of statistics is particularly egregious. She cites Women's Aid's report of 19 children killed by abusive fathers without any context about the total number of custody cases or comparative data about maternal abuse. This kind of selective statistics might advance her ideological agenda but offers no insight into how to better protect children.

The most damaging aspect of articles like Smith's is how they distract from the real systemic failures in child protection: chronic underfunding, overwhelming caseloads, poor inter-agency communication, and inadequate resources for proper investigation. These problems affect all children in the system, regardless of their parents' gender.

At Falsely Accused Network, we see daily how the presumption of guilt that Smith promotes destroys families and traumatizes children. Yes, domestic violence is real and devastating. Yes, some parents - both mothers and fathers - abuse their children. But suggesting that family courts have a "misogyny blind spot" because they don't automatically believe every allegation against fathers is dangerous and counterproductive.

The Sara Sharif case deserves a serious, balanced examination of how our child protection system failed - not exploitation as a vehicle for gender warfare. Only by honestly confronting the complex challenges these cases present, including the reality of false allegations, can we hope to prevent future tragedies.

The real story here isn't about misogyny - it's about a broken system that lacks the resources and protocols to properly investigate abuse allegations and protect vulnerable children. That's what we should be discussing, rather than indulging in Smith's ideologically-driven oversimplification of a complex and tragic case.