mother’s

Mother Denied Justice Campaigns to Transform the Family Courts

https://filia.org.uk/latest-news/2021/12/22/mother-denied-justice-campaigns-to-transform-the-family-courts

Mother Denied Justice Campaigns to Transform the Family Courts

By Victoria Hudson, Founder of #JusticeForFCchildren #GetMHome and campaigner for the Redress/Justice For Family Court Children.

Victoria Hudson has been campaigning for several years to increase the protection of domestic abuse survivors and children who become entangled in the family court system. Tragically, Victoria and her daughter have themselves experienced untold suffering, trauma, and harm at the hands of the family courts.

Victoria, who campaigns under the banner #JusticeforFCchildren, worked alongside other campaigners to successfully lobby the Government to review unsafe contact orders and the removal of children by the family courts. A report, published by the Ministry of Justice in June 2020 laid bare many hard truths about long-standing failings, including harming children by placing them in danger by “enabling the continued control of children and adult victims of domestic abuse by alleged abusers, as well as the continued abuse of victims and children.”[1]

Victoria is now passionately driven to bring about the radical changes necessary to protect domestic abuse survivors and their children from harmful and unjust state systems and structures, by making the family courts and their proceedings more transparent.

Like too many other women experiencing domestic violence and abuse, instead of protecting them, the state colluded with Victoria’s abuser in the most punishing way possible by severing mother and child. In September 2018, Victoria’s daughter (then aged 2) was physically and forcibly removed from her family home and placed under a Care Order with her ex-partner, who is not biologically related to her. Many other children in domestic abuse cases are severed from their mothers by adoption; the mother being blamed for the abuse rather than protected, and their right to family life permanently erased.

For Victoria and other mothers in her position, it is ironic that the Joint Committee on Human Rights, is conducting an inquiry into hundreds of forced adoptions that severed babies from unmarried mothers during the 1950s to 1970s, when mothers experiencing domestic abuse are currently facing similar infringements of human rights in the family courts.

Victoria is requesting the Ministry of Justice immediately review of her case in the family courts and is requesting the Joint Committee on Human Rights conduct an inquiry into whether family court decisions are breaching rights to family life.

[1] “Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases” (Ministry of Justice, June 2020)

If you want to support Victoria’s campaign, you can do three things:

  1. First and foremost, email a letter to Lord David Wolfson MP, Minister for Family Courts to request that he instigates an immediate review of Victoria’s own case in the family courts. If successful, this will provide a test case for the campaign and lead to further reviews. Use this letter to draft your own. His email is wolfsond@parliament.uk

  2. You can also email a letter to Ms Harriet Harman MP, Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, requesting that alongside the current review into historic forced adoptions, she also orchestrates a review of family court decisions in relation to their impact upon the rights of children and birth mothers to family life. Use this letter to draft your own. Her email is harriet.harman.mp@parliament.uk

  3. Help Victoria to get more supporters and allies by following and sharing #JusticeforFCchildren on Twitter @Victoria_Hudson and Facebook facebook.com/getmhome

[1] “Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases” (Ministry of Justice, June 2020)

Mother’s Day 2020

Today has felt really strange due to covid-19, self-isolating and trying to deal with Mother’s Day.  Normally I really hate the day and will do my best to avoid anything that will make me sad, today hasn’t felt Mother’s Day even though it’s been talked about on Facebook.  Of course, with all the churches being shut has added to the strangeness of the day.

It’s now 38 years since I first hated Mother’s Day and all because of forced adoption – I wouldn’t wish it on anybody as it is soul-destroying.  Nobody has really acknowledged that I am a mother as the only child I had was adopted but I am still a mother.  There are people now who know about my son but it was 23 years before I really started talking about him after I found him.  It was a shock as I wasn’t actively looking as I believed what I had been told that I would never be allowed (legally) to search for him.     

He was also shocked as he had been searching for me and had found my family quite quickly.  For about 18 – 20 months my family didn’t know where I was due to an argument I had with my sister and I stopped talking to them.  My parents knew where I was from late 2001 but still chose not to tell me he was searching for me nor did they tell him they had contact with me.

I’m not sure what’s worse – the not knowing anything or to go through reunion then falling out, it’s an ongoing struggle that will only go when I die.

March 2024
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