Beck Fitzgerald are proud to have represented the mother in her unrelenting battle for justice and are delighted that her son has now returned to live with her after six long years of being apart. We are saddened at the failures of our system which have had a devastating impact on this family.
Georgiana Farnell, Associate Solicitor at Beck Fitzgerald, who acted on behalf of the mother, said:
“I am so incredibly pleased for my client and her son, who have worked tirelessly to reach this point; however, the responsibility should never have been placed on my client’s 15 year old son to take his own steps to right this injustice. This is an incredibly important decision for families who have been separated as a result of erroneous findings”
A mother whose children were taken away by the family courts has been vindicated after a six-year struggle to overturn flawed evidence in her case.
The evidence was given by Melanie Gill, an unregulated psychologist, and led to court orders that terminated the children’s relationship with their mother, Erin*.
Gill advised a judge there was no need to investigate serious allegations of domestic abuse, and that the mother had turned her children against their father and should be banned from seeing them.
In a decision described now by lawyers as “draconian” and “extraordinary”, the court ordered the children’s removal in December 2019 and granted the father sole custody. They were nine and 12 at the time. Erin did not see them again until last year.
But last month, England’s most senior family judge overturned the court findings informed by Gill’s reports – a ruling that could open the door for other families assessed by Gill, who says she has acted as an expert witness in up to 200 cases.
During a high court hearing, Erin’s barrister Justin Ageros said the decision left her feeling like she had “a noose around her neck for six years” and has had an “incalculable impact” on her family.
“It wasn’t just me,” Erin told us this week. “The children were cut off from all their family and friends. They had 50% of their identity stripped away overnight without question.”
This case highlights a horrific catalogue of systemic failings on the part of those who should have been protecting children, resulting in the separation of children from a safe parent. The setting aside of the flawed findings in this case provides a beacon of hope that systemic change will result and justice might be possible for families who find themselves in similar situations.
Lawyers claimed Erin’s children had been silenced by the process set in motion by Gill’s evidence, even when the siblings raised allegations of abuse. They said errors and missed opportunities by every professional involved in the case failed to protect the siblings.
A previous attempt by the mother to appeal was blocked but, seven months after she launched a fresh application, the original findings have now been dismissed.
The case took a dramatic turn in November when Erin’s teenage son, Dylan*, ran away from his father’s home and hired his own solicitor. After a period in foster care and a series of urgent hearings, he was later reunited with his mother for their first Christmas together in six years.
Unusually, the teenager – represented by his own legal team – was in court on 29 January for his mother’s legal bid, overseen by the president of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane.
Dressed in a navy suit and striped shirt the 15-year-old sat at the front of the courtroom as his barrister described how he had lost all trust in professionals and become lonely, fearful and isolated in his father’s care.
McFarlane decided to “set aside” – or effectively throw out – the court’s previous findings and made a new order for the boy to live with his mother. He is yet to hand down his judgment.
Abuse allegations not examined:
Parental alienation is the idea that a child has rejected one parent after being manipulated by the other. It is commonly raised in family court cases – often by men in response to accusations of domestic abuse – and allegations have surged in recent years. But the notion that it is a diagnosable syndrome, which is how Gill approaches it, has been discredited as “harmful pseudoscience”.
Guidance published in December 2024 says experts should not be appointed to look for alienation and instead judges should take a factual approach to identifying specific “alienating behaviours”. It was this new information that meant Erin was able to bring her case back to court.
In July last year, a high court judge overturned Gill’s evidence in another case after finding that she had used methodology that couldn’t be relied on. In that case and in Erin’s, Gill said both women showed “narcissistic” traits and had been traumatised by their own childhoods. Each of them said this was untrue.
In Erin’s case, Gill said she was “projecting vengeful anger from her childhood relationship with her mother” against her partner and the children were being alienated from him as a result.
On Gill’s recommendation it was ordered that Erin should have no contact with her children until she had undergone costly therapy, which is not available on the NHS and that she was unable to access.
Expert witnesses appointed by the courts have a duty to act impartially. However, in January 2025, TBIJ and Tortoise exposed Gill’s controversial views in relation to domestic abuse as part of an undercover investigation.
Prior to Gill’s involvement in Erin’s case, both parents had made allegations of domestic abuse against the other and the court had set out the need for a “fact finding” hearing to establish the truth of them.
Erin’s allegations included serious physical and sexual assault during which she was injured.
However, when Gill was brought onto the case in 2019 – work for which she was paid around £16,000 – she advised the judge that a fact-find would be unnecessary.
Gill said the allegations of domestic abuse would make no difference to her assessment and District Judge Smith said he accepted her evidence that domestic abuse was not the “principle cause for the mother’s continuing issues”.
The fact-find was then abandoned by the district judge, who adopted Gill’s conclusions about “alienation” as the court’s findings. This meant complaints from both children about their father were also overlooked, including a serious allegation of physical abuse by Erin’s daughter.
Cafcass, the agency responsible for representing the interests of children in family court proceedings, recorded the daughter’s allegation but dismissed it as a symptom of ‘alienation’ and described it as “scripted” and “artificial”.
The children’s father, who has consistently denied all the allegations against him, chose not to attend or send legal representation to the most recent hearing in January.
The human cost:
Representing Dylan, Jo Delahunty KC argued that once the other professionals and the court adopted Gill’s “flawed process”, the children’s voices went unheard.
She said it was wrong to see the failures as “entirely engineered by an expert who was not qualified because at each stage there were others who should have stood back and scrutinised the fairness of the process”. They included the Cafcass officer, the children’s guardian, the social worker, the children’s solicitor and the judge.
“Not one professional did the right thing,” she said.
McFarlane said: “Melanie Gill considers this some kind of vendetta against her. This is far bigger than one person.
“It’s about the court properly engaging with allegations and cross-allegations. If there is a fault here it applies just as much to any other person who failed to get that.”
Gill asserts that she is well-qualified to perform the role of expert witness in family proceedings and that she has years of specialist training and expertise. In a 2023 case, she told the court: “I have been challenged and questioned on my qualifications in every single private law case I have ever undertaken and I have never been criticised.”
Dylan’s barrister said the professionals continued to turn a blind eye to her client even after he was taken from his mother, making it hard for him to trust those around him.
It was only when he instructed his own solicitor and was assessed by a social worker in November last year that his true feelings were shared with the court.
He had not believed the story he was fed about his mother, and being separated from her caused him “lasting harm”, the social worker reported.
His feelings of distrust and isolation meant he did not engage with his schoolmates or in his home life with his father, who he alleged was angry and controlling.
Instead he lived “in a bubble”, wearing headphones around the house and playing games in his room.
At one point when McFarlane suggested the impact on the teenager had been sufficiently explained, Dylan indicated to his barrister that he would like her to continue anyway. She said he wanted the court to know about the “loneliness and fear” of not being able to trust any adult from the age of nine to 15.
During the hearing Dylan, described by his barrister as “clear, articulate and brave”, would occasionally turn and whisper instructions to his legal team.
After one such instance Delahunty reminded the court how he and his sister had been forced to undergo therapy on Gill’s recommendation.
Dylan refused to engage with the sessions. But his sister – who is now 18 and was not a party to the case – was subjected to weekly appointments “predicated upon the truth of the Melanie Gill findings”, Erin’s barrister told the court.
Ageros described one psychotherapy report from 2022 as “horrific” adding: “[The daughter’s] stated lived experience pre-Melanie Gill was ‘I’m being abused by my father’. She then goes through six years of therapy where she is told ‘the abuser is your mother’. I shudder to think of the impact of that on her.”
State-sanctioned alienation
Ageros said one of the most striking features of the case was that before the children were removed they had not been “resisting seeing their father”. Erin, who was representing herself without a lawyer at the time Gill was appointed, said before they were taken the children were “spending 10 nights a month with their father and had been for four years of the separation”.
Delahunty described it as a “deep and biting irony” that, in addressing alleged alienation by the mother – who had not prevented the father seeing his children – the court then “enforced a process of alienation by court order” on her.
Psychologists assessing families and children on behalf of the courts should be registered with the regulator, according to guidelines. But ultimately it is within the rules for judges to appoint who they wish, leaving the door open for unregulated experts like Gill to provide evidence.
McFarlane said it was “astonishing” that it was Cafcass which had put forward an expert like Gill, who “is unregistered, has no clinical practice and does not see people other than to assess them and has this miasma of supposed qualifications”.
“None of [the qualifications] makes them qualified to undertake this work in any way,” he added.
Cafcass declined to comment for this story.
Through his lawyers, Dylan also urged McFarlane to consider other children who have been left in similar situations after expert evidence.
The new victims’ commissioner called for a wholesale review of cases where Gill’s evidence, or that of any other unregulated expert, had led to children being removed from their parents, but that measure was ruled out by the Judiciary last month. Instead, families could make a late appeal or fresh application, it was suggested – although this would not be viable for the children who are by now adults.
At the high court hearing, McFarlane acknowledged the need for a “proper process that fits with the justice system”, which he said he would address in his judgment.
After the hearing, Dylan told us he finally felt heard. “The court has actually listened to me after years of me saying who my dad really was and being ignored,” he said.
“My mum and I were right. Melanie Gill stole our childhoods. What happened is wrong and those responsible, including Cafcass, owe us an apology. We all suffered because of my dad being believed.”
He added: “I’m so grateful to be home with my mum finally and to feel happy again.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved
Georgiana specialises in private law matters including divorce, finances and cases concerning children.
Often commended by clients for her empathy and understanding, Georgiana manages each case with sensitivity whilst striving to achieve the best result.
Georgiana has assisted Jenny Beck in high net-worth cases, as well as complex children cases involving serious allegations of sexual abuse and alienating behaviours.
Alongside casework, Georgiana manages the Emergency Steps Team referrals and operations to ensure those at immediate risk are assisted as swiftly and efficiently as possible.
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