The Alienation Trap

How false ‘parental alienation’ allegations can flip domestic abuse survivors into ‘the abuser’ and why UK family courts can leave protective parents trapped in a no‑win bind.

You can feel the trap before you can name it. It is the moment you realise you are being judged for two opposite things at once: for letting the other parent have access to your child, and for not letting them have access to your child. For trying to keep things calm, and for being ‘difficult’. For speaking up, and for being ‘hostile’. For protecting your child, and in the next breath for ‘alienating’ them.

In England and Wales, private law disputes about child arrangements are meant to be decided by one principle: the child’s welfare. But official reviews have repeatedly warned that where domestic abuse is present, the system can struggle to see it clearly, particularly when abuse is pattern‑based (coercive control), contested, or occurring after separation through intimidation and litigation (Ministry of Justice, 2020; Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025).

I was, in one crucial sense, an exception. My ex-husband had a prior history that made it harder for institutions to dismiss what I was saying when the case reached its breaking point. I was believed in a way many survivors are not. But being believed did not spare me from the system paradox. I was still confronted with the hypocrisy at the heart of too many cases: you can be criticised for allowing contact and criticised for restricting it, sometimes by the same system, at different points in time.

The cruelest part is that the ‘correct’ choice is often only obvious in hindsight, after the system has accepted the kind of proof it recognises. Before then, the safer choice can be reframed as ‘misconduct’.

This feature is not an argument that alienating behaviours never happen. It is an argument about vulnerability: in a system that historically leans towards restoring contact, struggles to evidence coercive control, and operates under intense resource pressure, ‘alienation’ can be weaponised and protective parents can be pushed into a no‑win bind where either path can be used against them (Ministry of Justice, 2020; Family Justice Council, 2024).

1. Two stories enter court: the messy truth versus the neat accusation

Domestic abuse, particularly coercive control, is rarely tidy. It is cumulative and often private. It is a course of conduct that can include intimidation, monitoring, isolation, financial control, sexual coercion, and threats. UK statutory guidance emphasises that abuse is frequently sustained and subtle (HM Government, 2022).

In private law children proceedings, those patterns collide with a process that often prefers what can be itemised. A conviction is legible. A single incident is legible. A message screenshot is legible. A decade of fear, adaptation, hypervigilance, and ‘walking on eggshells’ is not.

Then comes the counter‑story; clean, emotionally persuasive, and hard to unhear: “They’re alienating the child from me.” A complex safeguarding narrative is forced to compete with a simple explanation for a child’s distress.

The Ministry of Justice’s ‘Assessing Risk of Harm’ report (often called the Harm Panel report) was commissioned after a call for evidence attracted more than a thousand responses, much of it focused on domestic abuse in private law children cases. It described recurring concerns about risk being minimised, a ‘pro‑contact’ orientation, and abusers continuing control through repeat litigation (Ministry of Justice, 2020).

2. The double‑bind: “You endangered your child” / “You alienated your child”

The double‑bind has two jaws. First, before there is ‘official’ proof that the system recognises, survivors can feel pressure: cultural, professional, sometimes judicial, to facilitate contact. Second, once danger is acknowledged (a conviction, findings, disclosure, or a pattern the court accepts), the survivor can be judged for not having restricted contact sooner.

That contradiction is structural, not personal. It is produced by a system that can default towards contact, and by an evidential hierarchy that can make pattern‑based abuse hard to establish quickly (Ministry of Justice, 2020).

The Family Justice Council’s 2024 guidance is important here because it names what too many cases blur: it distinguishes Protective Behaviours (actions taken to protect a child from exposure to abuse or harm) from Alienating Behaviours. The same outward act; limiting contact, asking for safeguards, seeking supervised handover, can be either protection or manipulation depending on the interpretive lens (Family Justice Council, 2024).

When the lens is wrong, protection can be treated as persecution.

3. From survivor to ‘abuser’: how role‑reversal actually works

False alienation allegations don’t merely deny abuse. They can invert the moral axis of the case. The survivor is re‑cast as the perpetrator, not of physical violence, but of psychological harm: ‘poisoning’, ‘programming’, ‘implacable hostility’, ‘emotional abuse’. In that inversion, the safeguarding parent becomes the danger, and the parent accused of abuse becomes the victim of a campaign.

This role‑reversal is rhetorically efficient. Coercive control is complex; alienation is a simple story with a clear villain. In an overloaded system, simplicity can win.

Official sources have increasingly acknowledged this collision. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report, ‘Everyday Business’, notes the close association between domestic abuse and parental alienation allegations, describing ‘parental alienation’ as frequently raised as a counter‑allegation in domestic abuse contexts (Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025). The Family Justice Council also warns that ‘parental alienation’ concepts are increasingly exploited within family litigation (Family Justice Council, 2024).

The mechanics are depressingly consistent:

·     A survivor raises safeguarding concerns: coercive control, fear at handovers, threats, child distress.

·     The other parent reframes concern as ‘alienation’: not ‘she is afraid’, but ‘she is fabricating fear’.

·     The case shifts from ‘risk’ to ‘relationship repair’: the emergency becomes restoring contact, and the protective parent becomes the obstacle.

·     Every action is then interpreted as evidence: asking for safeguards becomes ‘obstruction’; documenting incidents becomes ‘campaigning’; the child’s reluctance becomes ‘proof’.

In this dynamic, a survivor is forced to litigate her credibility rather than the child’s safety. The original question - what is happening to the child, and what arrangement best protects their welfare - can be eclipsed by a battle over whether the survivor is ‘reasonable’.

4. What ‘alienation’ means in UK family justice and why the term is risky

The phrase ‘parental alienation’ has a long and contested history. In England and Wales, recent official guidance has tried to bring clarity by shifting focus away from pseudo‑diagnoses and towards careful reasoning about a child’s behaviour and experience.

The Family Justice Council’s 2024 guidance explicitly states that ‘parental alienation syndrome’ has no evidential basis and is considered a harmful pseudo‑science. At the same time, it recognises that alienating behaviours, where proven, may cause harm to children. Its core aim is disciplined analysis, not labels (Family Justice Council, 2024).

A key framework in the guidance is the child’s reluctance, resistance or refusal (RRR) to spend time with a parent. The guidance is clear that RRR, by itself, is not evidence of psychological manipulation; it is a symptom that may have many explanations, including a child’s justified response to a parent’s harmful behaviour (Family Justice Council, 2024).

5. The silence that survivors call a ‘gag’

When survivors say they are ‘gagged’ by the family court, they don’t always mean a dramatic injunction. Often they mean a pervasive, practical silence created by a mix of legal restrictions and cultural fear.

First, most children proceedings are heard in private, and there are long‑standing restrictions on publishing information about those proceedings. Section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 creates automatic contempt risks around publication of information relating to certain private proceedings including many children cases (Administration of Justice Act 1960, s.12). The judiciary’s own guidance reminds observers that attendance does not grant a right to report or publish details of proceedings (Judiciary of England and Wales, 2019). Government guidance also explains that even when media can attend, reporting is restricted, especially in cases involving children (UK Government, 2013).

This ‘privacy by default’ has a serious consequence: it can make it harder for survivors to speak publicly about systemic problems without fear of contempt or accusations of breaching confidentiality. But the more insidious silence is internal, inside the case.

In many disputes, survivors learn that talking plainly can be punished. ‘Don’t undermine contact.’ ‘Don’t talk to the child about it.’ ‘Don’t escalate.’ The intention can be child‑focused, but in domestic abuse cases it can become chilling: abuse thrives when the protective parent is forced to speak in half‑sentences.

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report records survivors describing being discouraged from raising domestic abuse in the family court process and feeling that decisions were shaped by dismissive attitudes and a ‘pro‑contact culture’ (Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025).

That silence is compounded by an evidence gap at system level: decisions can turn on allegations framed as “alienating behaviours”, yet there is no routinely published, publicly accessible Cafcass/HMCTS breakdown showing how often such allegations feature in private-law children cases or how frequently they are associated with outcomes like a change in a child’s primary home. Cafcass publishes annual and monthly summaries about overall demand and caseload, but these publications do not provide a standard breakdown by allegation type (for example, “alienating behaviours”) or by outcomes in those cases (Cafcass, 2025a). At the same time, Cafcass says it does not use the term “parental alienation” and instead focuses on behaviours and impact on the child (Cafcass, 2025b), while the Family Justice Council’s guidance stresses the need to distinguish a child’s reluctance / resistance / refusal that may be explained by abuse, fear or other welfare factors from cases involving psychological manipulation, and warns against simplistic narratives in litigation (Family Justice Council, 2024). 

Without comparable transparency about practice and outcomes at system level, public understanding is shaped instead by individual judgments, yet even published judgments are typically subject to strict anonymity warnings, limiting what families and journalists can safely say. The dynamics are visible in R v R [2025] EWHC 3180 (Fam), a private-law appeal judgment noting both domestic-abuse allegations and allegations of alienation, and recording findings that the mother had engaged in “alienating behaviours” and made “false allegations” to third-party professionals, alongside a prominent warning that identification of the children / family would risk contempt (R v R, 2025).

6. The cruelest bind: when your child discloses further harm, and you’re afraid to repeat it

This is where the weaponisation of alienation can become most dangerous: when your child discloses something new.

In principle, safeguarding overrides everything. The family procedure rules contain routes for lawful communication of information relating to children proceedings. Practice Direction 12G sets out circumstances in which information may be communicated for proper purposes, subject to any direction of the court (Ministry of Justice, n.d.-b).

But survivors often describe a different lived reality: the moment your child discloses fear, distress or harm, you can feel the trap tighten. If you repeat the disclosure, you fear being accused of ‘inventing concerns’, ‘coaching’, ‘sabotaging contact’; in short, alienation. If you stay silent, you fear failing your child.

That is why false alienation allegations do not only distort outcomes, they can discipline speech. They create a climate where protective parents self‑silence, minimise, and second‑guess their instincts, because the price of ‘saying the wrong thing’ can be reframed as misconduct in court.

A system cannot claim to prioritise child welfare while making it dangerous for a child’s protective parent to say: ‘I’m worried.’

7. The law as it is supposed to work: PD12J, vulnerability protections, and children as victims

England and Wales has frameworks intended to prevent unsafe outcomes where domestic abuse is alleged. Practice Direction 12J (PD12J) supplements the Family Procedure Rules and sets expectations for how courts should address domestic abuse and harm when making child arrangements and contact orders (Ministry of Justice, n.d.-a).

There are also vulnerability protections. Practice Direction 3AA and Part 3A of the Family Procedure Rules require courts to consider whether a party’s participation is diminished by vulnerability and whether participation directions are needed (Ministry of Justice, n.d.-c).

And the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 explicitly recognises that a child who sees or hears, or experiences the effects of domestic abuse is to be regarded as a victim in their own right (Domestic Abuse Act 2021, s.3). Statutory guidance reinforces that this recognition is intended to strengthen responses across agencies (HM Government, 2022).

The problem, as the Harm Panel report made clear, is not simply whether rules exist. It is whether the system has the culture, time, expertise and consistency to apply them in a way that recognises coercive control, understands post‑separation abuse, and resists rhetorical shortcuts (Ministry of Justice, 2020).

8. ‘Everyday business’: why reform is now a UK public issue

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report describes domestic abuse as ‘everyday business’ for the family courts, based on a pilot study reviewing nearly 300 case files and observing close to 100 hearings across three court sites (Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025). It argues that the system still struggles to recognise and respond consistently to domestic abuse, with risks for children’s safety.

In October 2025, the Ministry of Justice published the final report of its review of the presumption of parental involvement, launched in response to the Harm Panel’s recommendation (Ministry of Justice, 2025). Whatever reforms follow, the direction of travel is clear: the UK is being pushed to confront the consequences of ‘contact as default’ in cases where domestic abuse is present.

9. What a safer system looks like (and what it stops doing)

A trauma‑informed, child‑centred system would not treat ‘alienation’ as a shortcut diagnosis. It would start with careful reasoning about what explains a child’s experience, in context.

In practice, the evidence points towards several grounded shifts:

·     Pattern literacy as baseline: coercive control and domestic abuse should be assessed as courses of conduct, not as isolated ‘incidents’ (HM Government, 2022).

·     RRR as symptom: a child’s reluctance, resistance or refusal should prompt structured enquiry, not assumption (Family Justice Council, 2024).

·     Protective behaviours recognised: courts and professionals should explicitly distinguish safeguarding action from manipulation (Family Justice Council, 2024).

·     Litigation abuse taken seriously: repeat applications and ‘process as punishment’ should be identified and managed as potential post‑separation control (Ministry of Justice, 2020; Family Justice Council, 2024).

·     Vulnerability protections used early: participation directions and special measures should enable survivors to give their best evidence and reduce retraumatisation (Ministry of Justice, n.d.-c).

Conclusion: being believed isn’t the same as being safe

I was believed, in the end, partly because there was history the system could process. However, that moment came after many reports to the police that I either dropped, or were dismissed. That is precisely why I can say this without ideology and without exaggeration: even when the system believes you, it can still trap you in a structure where either choice can be used against you. The system itself can exacerbate or induce cognitive dissonance for victims of abuse. It can feel like a coin toss as to whether you’ll be protected or villainised.

The question is not only whether domestic abuse survivors are believed in private law children cases. It is also: what does the system demand of a protective parent before it will treat protection as legitimate? How many children are living inside the gap between what is true and what is provable? And what would it take for the family court to become a place where safeguarding speech is not punished as ‘misconduct’?

If domestic abuse is ‘everyday business’, then child safety cannot remain a side issue. And a concept as combustible as ‘alienation’ cannot be allowed to function as a role‑reversal engine; flipping survivors into perpetrators, and forcing protective parents into silence.

For some families, the cost of this misclassification is not simply a bad day in court but a life reorganised. Where an ‘alienation’ narrative is accepted, the courts can (and do) make orders transferring a child’s primary care from one parent to the other - a decisive intervention reflected in appellate case law summaries (Cafcass, 2025). If the underlying reality is not alienation but abuse and fear, or if protective behaviour has been wrongly re‑labelled as manipulation, the consequence can be a child being removed from the care of the protective parent and placed primarily with the very person they are frightened of. That can rupture attachment, undermine the child’s sense of safety, and compound the harms domestic abuse already inflicts on children who ‘see, hear or experience the effects’ of abuse (Domestic Abuse Act 2021; HM Government, 2022). It is precisely because the stakes can be that high, and the harm can be lifelong, that official reviews have called for modern, pattern‑based understanding of domestic abuse and safer, more consistent decision‑making in private law children proceedings (Ministry of Justice, 2020; Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025; Family Justice Council, 2024).

 

References

Administration of Justice Act 1960 (1960) Section 12: Publication of information relating to proceedings in private. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/8-9/65/section/12 (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Cafcass (2025) Case law summaries on Alienating Behaviours. Cafcass. Available at: https://www.cafcass.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-07/Case%20law%20summaries%20on%20Alienating%20Behaviours.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Cafcass (2025a) Annual data summaries. Cafcass. Available at: https://www.cafcass.gov.uk/about-us/our-data/annual-data-summaries (Accessed 31 December 2025).

Cafcass (2025b) Alienating behaviours. Cafcass. Available at: https://www.cafcass.gov.uk/parent-carer-or-family-member/applications-child-arrangements-order/how-your-family-court-adviser-makes-their-assessment-your-childs-welfare-and-best-interests/alienating-behaviours (Accessed 31 December 2025).

Domestic Abuse Act 2021 (2021) Section 3: Children as victims of domestic abuse. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/17/section/3 (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales (2025) Everyday Business: Addressing domestic abuse and continuing harm through a family court review and reporting mechanism. Office of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. Available at: https://domesticabusecommissioner.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Everyday-Business-full-report-web.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Family Justice Council (2024) Guidance on responding to a child’s unexplained reluctance, resistance or refusal to spend time with a parent and allegations of alienating behaviour. Courts and Tribunals Judiciary. Available at: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Family-Justice-Council-Guidance-on-responding-to-allegations-of-alienating-behaviour-2024-1-1.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2025).

HM Government (2022) Domestic Abuse Act 2021: Statutory Guidance. GOV.UK. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62c6df068fa8f54e855dfe31/Domestic_Abuse_Act_2021_Statutory_Guidance.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Judiciary of England and Wales (2019) President’s Guidance: Reporting Restrictions in the Family Courts. Courts and Tribunals Judiciary. Available at: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Presidents-Guidance-reporting-restrictions-Final-Oct-2019.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Ministry of Justice (2020) Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases. GOV.UK. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895173/assessing-risk-harm-children-parents-pl-childrens-cases-report_.pdf (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Ministry of Justice (2024) Guide to Family Court Statistics. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2024/guide-to-family-court-statistics (Accessed 31 December 2025).

Ministry of Justice (2025) Presumption of parental involvement review: Final report. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/presumption-of-parental-involvement-review (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Ministry of Justice (n.d.-a) Practice Direction 12J: Child Arrangements and Contact Orders: Domestic Abuse and Harm. Justice.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/family/practice_directions/pd_part_12j (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Ministry of Justice (n.d.-b) Practice Direction 12G: Communication of information. Justice.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/family/practice_directions/pd_part_12g (Accessed 30 December 2025).

Ministry of Justice (n.d.-c) Practice Direction 3AA: Vulnerable persons: participation in proceedings and giving evidence. Justice.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/family/practice_directions/practice-direction-3aa-vulnerable-persons-participation-in-proceedings-and-giving-evidence (Accessed 30 December 2025).

R v R [2025] EWHC 3180 (Fam) (McKendrick J) (2025) 5 December 2025. Find Case Law (The National Archives). Available at: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/fam/2025/3180 (Accessed 31 December 2025).

UK Government (2013) Sharing information outside of court in family proceedings. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sharing-information-outside-of-court-in-family-proceedings (Accessed 30