The Fault Line
A follow-up to my earlier exposé, ‘The Alienation Trap’, focused on one specific mechanism that can push protective parents into danger: the gap between urgent safeguarding advice and clear, written, joined-up pathways. In ‘The Alienation Trap’ I wrote about a courtroom dynamic, how false ‘alienation’ allegations can flip a domestic abuse survivor into the one being treated as the abuser, and how protective parenting can be recast as wrongdoing. This follow-up sits earlier in the pipeline. It is about the moment an arrest happens, or a disclosure is made, or a referral lands on a social worker’s desk, and a parent asks a simple question, “what do I do about contact now?” The answer can be decisive, and it can also be dangerously ambiguous. In my case, after my ex-husband was arrested, children’s services were referred in and asked about his contact with my children. I told them contact was still regular, albeit through a third party, because I did not believe I had the right to unila...
