Mums on the Run: Failed by the Family Courts, 91热爆 iPlayer, 4 September 2023

Complaint

A viewer complained the programme failed to treat the topic of parental alienation as a controversial topic, requiring the inclusion of a range of viewpoints and appropriate challenge to contentious opinions. 聽The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the 91热爆鈥檚 editorial standards of impartiality.


Outcome

The programme was not concerned with the common-sense meaning of the term 鈥減arental alienation鈥 (ie behaviour by one parent which has the intention or effect of alienating a child from the other parent), but with a more technical sense, derived from Dr Richard Gardner鈥檚 coinage of 鈥減arental alienation syndrome鈥, characterised as a psychological condition which can be diagnosed by those with appropriate expertise.聽 Understood in that sense, the topic is controversial to an extent, there being some psychologists who would maintain its validity against a growing consensus that Dr Gardner鈥檚 work has been discredited.聽 In the ECU鈥檚 judgement, however, the controversy was not such as to require the inclusion of a range of views in the context of this programme.聽 The programme鈥檚 focus was not primarily on the merits of parental alienation as a concept, but on the impact of its use in family court proceedings against mothers who had previously been victims of domestic abuse.聽 The ECU noted that recent draft guidelines from the Family Justice Counsel called for a move away from the notion of parental alienation as a syndrome capable of being diagnosed, from the inappropriate use of experts in support of such diagnoses, and possibly from the very use of the term itself, and towards considering allegations of alienating behaviour on a fact-finding basis, with expert assessment called on only when appropriate.聽 On that basis the ECU concluded that controversy about the concept was nearing, if not already at, an end in relation to the UK courts, and that the programme observed the level of impartiality appropriate to the subject matter and its context.

Not upheld