Up to 90% of women escaping an abusive relationship experience post separation abuse. This can take many forms including emotional, psychological, financial, physical and even sexual abuse. However, 'custody stalking', using the family courts to intrude upon the lives of protective parents by weaponising child arrangements, is an incredibly effective, and widespread, tactic of post separation abuse.

Dr Kathryn Spearman from Pennsylvania State University is a leading expert in post separation abuse. In this podcast she explains how her own background as a paediatric nurse and first hand experience of controlling parents refusing lifesaving treatment for their own children, led her to question the legal systems that enable controlling people to harm their own children in plain sight.

She discusses how harmful domestic abuse and coercive control is to children's health and how professionals can identify the controlling parent from behavioural patterns. Advocating for systems change and improved training for legal professionals to enable earlier recognition of this tactic of abuse, Dr Spearman eloquently describes how harmful post separation abuse is for survivors and their children.

Domestic abuse — and coercive control in particular — leaves deep, lasting scars. Yet in financial remedy proceedings, the threshold for proving misconduct remains so high that most victims never meet it. Case law has evolved away from the statute’s wording, and the courts’ reluctance to “rummage through the attic” of the marriage has become almost a mantra.

But our understanding of coercive control has transformed. We now recognise its tactics, its cumulative damage, and the way it can shape every aspect of a victim’s financial position.

So the real question is this: now that we finally see the harm clearly, isn’t it time the financial remedies court recalibrated its approach — and stopped treating abuse as legally invisible? Sarah Ellis is joined by barristers Samantha Hillas KC and Anita Mehta and solicitor, Olivia Piercy to discuss this issue and how we might achieve change in the future. We discuss the historical approach of the courts to allegations of misconduct, how high the threshold for conduct has been set, whether statutory change is necessary to reflect the harms to victims and what happens at the coalface when allegations of domestic abuse are made in financial remedy proceedings.

Please follow this channel for further podcasts on coercive control from a legal perspective. The next episode is on Post Separation Abuse with Asst. Professor Kathryn Spearman.

Are the family courts routinely ignoring or minimising allegations of domestic abuse? Join barrister, Sarah Ellis, Professor Jo Delahunty KC and Professor Rosemary Hunter KC (Hon) to discuss coercive control, whether allegations of domestic abuse should ever be treated as 'historic', how victims are treated in the court, how we can evidence domestic abuse better and whether the Pathfinder process is the panacea we're looking for.