When Protective Parents Are Labelled the Danger

In 2019, a family court judge determined that Kate, a mother raising legitimate safeguarding concerns, was anemotionally unfit parent. No qualified clinical psychologist or psychiatrist made that assessment using standardised tools or clinical evaluation. On the strength of the judicial finding alone, her son Gabriel was separated from her.

This outcome is not an isolated anomaly. Qualitative research and official reports reveal a recurring pattern in which protective parents (predominantly mothers) who raise concerns about domestic abuse or child safety can find those very concerns reframed as evidence of psychological dysfunction or alienating behaviour.

A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno and colleagues at the University of Manchester interviewed 45 mothers with lived experience of domestic abuse and private law family court proceedings. Participants reported significant mental and physical health impacts they attributed to the court process itself. Many described parental alienation allegations as functioning totrap, silence, and pathologisethem: once raised, the focus often shifted away from their original safeguarding concerns, leaving mothers feeling that advocating for their children’s safety was interpreted as evidence against them.

The authors link these experiences to the concept ofDARVO(Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) — a pattern documented in abuse dynamics research (Harsey, Zurbriggen & Freyd, 2017), where accountability is evaded by denying harm, attacking the credibility of the person raising the issue, and reversing victim and offender roles. In the court context, mothers in the study perceived this dynamic when their protective actions were recast as the source of harm.

Adrienne Barnett’s 2020 analysis of reported case law similarly identified patterns in which parental alienation concepts were sometimes deployed in ways that reframed safeguarding concerns raised by resident parents. The Ministry of Justice’s 2020 Expert Panel report (Harm Report) recorded widespread concerns from submissions that counter-allegations of alienation could create barriers for victims, contribute to minimisation of abuse, and lead to children’s voices being subject to selective interpretation.

These sources do not prove every case follows this pattern, but they document a credible and recurring risk: when a system prioritises contact or applies contested psychological frameworks without sufficient safeguards, protective parenting can be misconstrued as the problem. In Kate’s case, the court’s 2019 finding that she was emotionally unfit, made without clinical expertise, directly enabled Gabriel’s separation from his mother.

Recent reforms offer some safeguards. The Family Justice Council’s December 2024 guidance stresses that safeguarding concerns must be addressed first, that alienating behaviours are factual matters for the court (not clinical diagnoses), and that the child’s reluctance or resistance must be understood in full context. Yet implementation remains uneven, and the human cost of earlier decisions continues.

Kate’s story illustrates the stakes. A mother raising legitimate concerns should not have to prove she is not “emotionally unfit” in the absence of proper clinical assessment. When the court system labels the protective parent as the danger without robust, expert-led evidence, it risks harming the very children it is meant to protect.

The evidence from Dalgarno et al., the Harm Report, and related research shows why families like Kate and Gabriel deserve better: decisions grounded in clinical expertise where psychological fitness is at issue, rigorous fact-finding on abuse allegations, and genuine listening to children’s voices rather than selective filtering through adult conflict.

A court that separates a child from a fit, protective mother on the basis of an unqualified “emotional unfitness” finding demonstrates its own unfitness to make such life-altering decisions without stronger safeguards.

Sources

• Dalgarno, E., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Bramwell, D., Barnett, A., & Verma, A. (2024). Health-related experiences of family court and domestic abuse in England: A looming public health crisis.Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody & Child Development.https://doi.org/10.1080/26904586.2024.2307609

• Harsey, S. J., Zurbriggen, E. L., & Freyd, J. J. (2017). Perpetrator responses to victim confrontation: DARVO and victim self-blame.Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma.

• Barnett, A. (2020). A genealogy of hostility: Parental alienation in England and Wales.Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 42(1), 18–36.

• Ministry of Justice (2020).Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases.https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessing-risk-of-harm-to-children-and-parents-in-private-law-children-cases