Fair Divorce | DARVO

What women’s rights campaigners don’t want you to know

In recent months the campaign waged by academics, activists and others who are seeking to distract attention from abuse suffered by children who are triangulated into the breakdown of parental relationships, has escalated. A now steady stream of what appears to be an ever increasing hysteria (I use the word purposefully), about the family courts around the world, demonstrates that this now visible network of women, who possess neither clinical qualifications, regulation or experience in working with children who align with a parent and reject the other, have one aim only, which is to promote the interests of some mothers who have been found to have caused serious harm to their children.

This is achieved by reversing the victim and offender in such situations in the minds of the public, policy makers and those involved in supporting families, a strategy known in their world as DARVO (deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender).

In their efforts to protect these mothers found to have abused their children they have created a narrative about the label and theory of parental alienation (which they say is rooted in protecting men accused of sexual abuse) and they have created their own label for the dynamics seen when fathers cause their children to reject their mothers (CAMS), which itself does not have any psychological evidence to support it and as such can be called ‘pseudoscience’. They are also seen to involve themselves in live cases in the family courts, in attempts to undermine legal processes (more detail on that coming soon). Whilst this strategy has, on the face of things, appeared to have some success in terms of the label and theory of parental alienation, it does not seem to have pushed back the awareness of the family courts that some patterns of behaviours in post separation family life, are deeply damaging to children and cause serious emotional and psychological harm. So far so good in terms of boundary holding, which is what all of us working in child protection want the family courts to do, but given the power of these women, which includes many in positions of public office, (at least in the UK), let’s not get complacent when it comes to the direction of travel these campaigners are heading in.

One only has to take a look at the reach these women have in terms of their connections in the media which enable them to reach into institutions around the world with their DARVO strategies.

The use of “PA” by allegedly abusive fathers against mothers seeking to protect their children’s best interests has caused extensive harm to mothers and children worldwide e.g. the UNSRVAWG global report on custody violence, Ministry of Justice Harm Report, Mercer and Drew, 2022; Dallam and Silberg, 2016).

Thousands of children will go to bed tonight in the court-ordered care of violent fathers because a judge accepted a diagnosis of a non-existent disorder, says Carrie Leonetti

The most troubling part of the testimonies received highlight a deliberate decision by Courts to allow a child to be returned to an abusive parent, even where there is credible evidence of abuse, and only because contact with that parent was considered more important than any other consideration.

Unregulated experts appointed by family courts have caused harm to children by separating them from their mothers and forcing them to live with and have contact with fathers accused of violence and abuse, according to Dr Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson (UCL Risk & Disaster Reduction).

Denying, attacking and reversing who is the victim and who is the offender (DARVO).

With those examples above, the belief structure of this group of women becomes clear and their willingness to make claims based on mere conjecture, as in the case of the last article above, their attempts to defend mothers found to have abused their children, by deflecting blame onto experts working in such cases is evident. What these women want the general public to believe is that mothers found to have abused their children are innocent whilst the fathers who provide safe care for abused children are the true abusers. This process, of switching the roles of who is victim and who is perpetrator is one that these women call DARVO, it is a tactic that they are using increasingly to try and convince others that abusive mothers are innocent, it is a troubling trend which hides significant risks of harm to children.

When DARVO is exposed

Last weekend I watched a documentary on Netflix which was first aired by Channel 5 in the UK earlier this year. Entitled ‘My Wife, My Abuser’ this harrowing story of Richard Spencer exposes the reality of female perpetrated domestic abuse. It is a graphic depiction of violence in the home, which is meted out casually on a regular basis by Richard’s wife. This documentary also shows, through the video evidence collected by Richard, the way in which children are triangulated into adult matters through horrifying exposure to their mother’s violence and how they are, coerced into allegiance with an abusive mother through that. I defy anyone to watch this documentary and then deny that children can be manipulated, terrorised and silenced by exposure to these dynamics, which cannot be understood through any lens other than a pattern of deliberate emotional and psychological harm of her children and deliberate emotional, psychological and physical abuse of their father.

Sheree Spencer was arrested and eventually jailed for four years for the harm that she caused to her husband. Before that however, she told the police that Richard Spencer was the real abuser and that everything she had done to him, had been done to her by him. Even in the face of video evidence of her going after him with a carving knife, even in the face of video evidence of her telling her daughter that he is a weak and pathetic man they are going to get rid of, she continued to claim that she was the victim and he was the perpetrator.

Had there not been video evidence, Richard may well have been arrested himself and the children would have lost their healthy parent, precisely because of the manner in which the mythology of the ‘protective mother’ and the ‘abusive father’ which is peddled by women’s rights campaigners. Fortunately, Richard had video evidence and the reality of the harm caused to him and the children by their abusive mother was indisputable. The documentary is a difficult watch, not least because of Richard’s suffering. For me however, watching the exposure of his children to their mother’s manipulations, violence and inter-personal terrorism, is the biggest horror story because it perfectly reflects what I know to be true in situations where children align with one parent and reject the other.

DARVO, campaigners and the Family Courts

The truth about children being removed from parents and sent to live with parents they are rejecting in private and public law cases, is that the children concerned are being removed from the abuse they suffering at the hands of one parent who has triangulated them into the adult relationship and caused them serious emotional and psychological harm. In all of the cases that I have worked in over fifteen years, removal of children from parents has been on the basis of the serious emotional and psychological harm they have suffered at the hands of the parent they were removed from and those cases where a parent was claiming that the child was being harmed when they were not, were differentiated in what are lengthy court processes. It is a fallacy to say that children are being removed from protective mothers to live with abusive fathers (at least in the UK), and when you see the evidence and hear from the young people themselves who were removed in such circumstances, the truth is crystal clear.

Josh and Alex

Josh Timmons, is now 25 years old and studying for an MA in social work. At our told us Symposium at Cambridge University in September of this year, he told us that he was removed from his mother because of her diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder and factitious illness. Not only had his mother made him sick, she had convinced him that he was sick to the degree where he had ‘memories’ that he knows cannot be true. He was removed from his mother due to the harm she had caused him and went to live with his father who he credits now with saving his life. You can read the full transcript of Josh’s testimony below.

‘My mother emotionally and psychologically abused me in a way that I fully, 100 per cent, believed that I hated my dad; that I didn’t want to see him, that I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. She would make me physically ill to a schedule so that I would miss visitation.’ Josh – Aged 25 – September 2024

Alex Dean, who also gave testimony at our Symposium, spoke of being removed from a mother who had so seriously abused her over her lifetime that now that she has recovered she has written a book to help other children in her position. Alienated children, she says, are being silenced by these campaigners and their lives are being harmed not by the professionals who protect children, but by campaigners who listen to abusive parents, believe them without question and report their views as fact.

Both Alex and Josh are victims of these campaigners using DARVO tactics, their lived experience is denied and, as recent articles demonstrate, even their recovery is twisted by conjecture and the false assertion, that a child who is healthy and well after being removed, has been forced to accept the decision of the Court. It is, quite simply untrue and is in fact, evidence of the same ruminative behaviours which are seen in mothers found to have abused their children.

I don’t think anyone who listened to Josh or to Alex speaking earlier this year would say they are worn down by anything or anyone. Both are now at university, both are doing incredibly well on their chosen path in life and each can articulate their recovery with confidence and clarity. Whether campaigners seeking to promote the interests of abusive mothers would be able to hear their voices however is doubtful, because somewhere in the history of their campaign and in their determination to uphold their own ideological position, their empathy for abused children, clearly got lost.

The final element to raise in this ongoing DARVO saga is the way in which the compulsion to ‘believe all children’ leaves some women and many children at risk of serious harm. The ‘believe all children’ trope, which these campaigners are trying to force back into the family court system, leaves some women at risk of being disbelieved when their children reject them, because ‘believe all children’ means that whatever children say must be followed without question, leaving many children who are being coerced and manipulated without any protection at all. This is, as the documentary about Richard Spencer’s experience of domestic abuse demonstrates, a dangerous approach, because as Richard explained in the documentary, in order to protect his children from being harmed by the mother as he was harmed, he would tell them to ‘tell their mother what she wanted to hear‘. The children were also seen adapting their behaviours in the video evidence, to regulate their mother to avoid her violence and manage their own internal terror. And as Josh explains in his testimony above, he knew to be on his guard when professionals were around because protecting his unpredictable mother was a major driver in his behaviour.

The way in which vulnerable children will go to extreme lengths to protect a parent they are trauma bonded to has been something that I have witnessed over many years. And when you see the harm that this does to little lives, it is simply not possible to stand by silently and do nothing. Which is why, despite the risks of retaliation, despite the lies you read in the media and despite the nonsense written online by women who cannot contain their rage, I will continue to raise the alarm about what is happening to some children in divorce and separation and continue to work to support healthy mothers and fathers, whose children are trauma bonded to abusive parents presenting as protective, when they are anything but.

This article was written by Karen Woodall and is published here with her permission.