Divorce mediators urged to review approach to domestic violence
Family court welfare officers, and especially voluntary sector mediators, who work with separating and divorcing parents, need to review their methods for identifying victims of domestic violence as a matter of urgency, according to a study supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Under the Family Law Act 1996, mediators in particular are expected to play an increasingly important role in helping former partners to reach their own agreements about money, property and about living and parental contact arrangements for children.
But authors Marianne Hester, Chris Pearson and Lorraine Radford conclude that an impartial, mediatory approach is unlikely to be appropriate when one parent - usually the mother - has experienced physical, sexual or psychological abuse. They argue that it is unlikely to redress the unequal power balance between abuser and victim and may lead to unworkable agreements that place women and children in further danger.
National standards laid down for family court welfare officers (employed by the probation service) recommend that they should consider the possibility of violence and whether it is advisable to invite former partners to joint meetings. However, a survey of front-line staff found that only half routinely attempted to 'screen' separating or divorcing couples for possible domestic violence when preparing welfare reports for the court.
The survey also found discrepancies between the actual screening practices used by voluntary sector mediators and guidelines on dealing with domestic violence issued recently by the 'umbrella' organisation, National Family Mediation. The policy statement recommends individual meetings with each partner as a preliminary step to discover whether violence is an issue. But only 8 per cent of mediators said they systematically held separate meetings for that purpose.
Mediators often assumed that solicitors, court welfare officers and other professionals would raise issues of violence beforehand - or that clients would voluntarily screen themselves out of mediation if afraid of negotiating with a former partner. A few were deliberately ignoring the guidelines because they believed any prior knowledge about their client would compromise their 'impartiality'.
Dr. Marianne Hester, a lecturer at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, said: "Our survey found that many mediators are tending to minimise the existence and impact of domestic violence. Those who were least likely to screen for domestic violence were most likely to allow mediation to go ahead - with potentially dangerous consequences."
She added: "There is a need for court welfare and voluntary sector mediation services to develop systematic screening practices for all cases by holding separate, preliminary meetings with both former partners. In cases where there turns out to have been a history of domestic violence, there should be a tendency to presume that mediation will not be appropriate. This is due to the grossly unequal balance of power in any negotiation and the low chance of reaching agreements that are both safe and fair."
