A long time ago in 2011 I wrote a blog post that was critical of Napo: the blogpost ABUSE OF PROCESS: DRAMATIC EXTENT OF STALKING IN THE FAMILY COURTS concerned the publication of a “dossier” of family court cases said to support the proposition that family court processes were being abused by convicted stalkers (published by Napo and PAS). Harry Fletcher, Assistant General Secretary of Napo, in a press release at the time said it was “outrageous” that “perpetrators of child abuse, murder and rape were given legal aid to continue to torment their victims through the family courts. This appears to have been going on for many years and has caused untold stress to victims and families. It is crucial that these vexatious applications be struck out“.

It was a punchy soundbite, but I didn’t think that the dossier made out the case at all, even if the underlying point was a good one. And I was worried that Napo had published a document that gave a very poor impression as to the impartiality of CAFCASS and did not advance public confidence in the family court system. More particularly I was worried that the material had been published in breach of the law concerning publication of information arising from family proceedings. In a year when at least one parent and one campaigner had been held in contempt of court for breach of that law (albeit a breach of a specific injunction rather than the rules per se – see Doncaster MBC v Watson [2011] EWHC 2376, the last in a series of judgments in that case [update 5 July : in fact there is a later judgment Doncaster MBC v Watson [2011] EWHC 2498 which deals with the question of whether the court could make a suspended order on an application to purge]), I thought it was unlikely (and yet on one level unsurprising) that an organisation like Napo would have, in conjunction with CAFCASS Officers, breached those court rules for the sake of a publicity campaign. On the face of it this seemed to be what had happened, which I thought rather extraordinary. So, before publication I tried to get in touch with Napo to make sure I had my facts straight. I asked how the case studies had been obtained, whether they were from a single source and whether the facts had been verified in some way. I asked if the other parties involved in the case, their lawyers or the judge in the case had been consulted. And I asked if judicial permission for disclosure of the information had been sought and received. I heard nothing. Continue Reading…