Letter submitted by Vicki

I have filed this under reproductive rights as family court seems to have been missed out from your overview. Thousands of women have been stripped of their right to see and parent their own child, as a form of reproductive slavery if an abusive father decides to go to family court. Evidence and his history of domestic abuse are routinely covered up by judges, social workers and attorneys, with the woman being reframed as mad, bad or too sad to be an effective parent, rather than acknowledging the role of the abuser. I am in this position now, having not seen my child for three years, with a family court judge that refused to examine my ex partner's history of domestic violence and his coercive control of our child. Although this is happening in the UK, this is a direct parallel of family courts in the US and worldwide. My child is kept in a hostage state, brainwashed to deny the violence she herself has experienced at his hands, and surrounded by teachers and social workers who have framed her mother as the cause of her pain and her father as her saviour. As a result of the shock of losing my child in a court that tampered with evidence and fined and barred me from talking about his abuse, I have developed several health injuries from the stress including fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and C-PTSD. I have struggled to maintain my income and lost £30,000 in legal fees in an effort to maintain contact with my own child.