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The Guardian
24-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘Why do they dislike me so much?': the trials, trolls and triumphs of Britain's most divisive barrister
At lunchtime, when she is working at her barristers' chambers in central London, Charlotte Proudman, a specialist in family law, faces a confronting choice. Should she nip around the corner to Pret a Manger or join her colleagues at the Middle Temple dining hall? It's not so much a question of whether she feels like a sandwich or a sit-down meal, but a more existential decision, requiring her to analyse who she is and where she belongs. It is 15 years since Proudman qualified as a barrister, but she still feels a sense of alienation when she walks into the formal dining halls. 'It's largely a sea of male, pale, stale figures sitting there, all in their suits. They all look identical, and are probably from similar demographic backgrounds. As a woman, you already stand out,' she says when we meet at her deserted offices on Good Friday. 'It feels like a pocket of establishment elitism. In Pret you'll have a mixture of solicitors, some paralegals, maybe some judges popping in and out; it's more cosmopolitan.' Since she started eating at Middle Temple, Proudman, 36, has repeatedly been surprised by the questions the mostly male diners lob in her direction. When she began her career at the bar, she found that it was 'by some distance, the most male environment I had ever encountered'. Often the men begin by remarking that she has an accent, and start hazarding inaccurate guesses about where she's from. 'They suggest Leeds or Yorkshire and I'm not from any of those places – but it's almost as if they're making a point of the fact that I don't belong, that I'm an outsider,' she says, adding that almost no one has heard of Leek, the market town where she grew up, near Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. When she first qualified, she would be asked where she had studied at university; older barristers, she says, were nonplussed when she said Keele. Occasionally they asked her what her father did for a living; she avoided saying that he was an alcoholic who died in a car crash when she was four. She was unsettled by their shared cultural reference points. 'I know it sounds funny, but everyone's gone skiing, everyone goes to the opera. They have these extracurricular activities which I've just never done.' You can understand why Pret might begin to seem the logical choice. Proudman's unease echoes that felt by Brenda Hale, the first female president of the supreme court, when she moved from Yorkshire to London to start at the bar, and found herself surrounded by men she privately called 'quadrangle to quadrangle to quadrangle boys' – lawyers who had been at independent boarding schools, then Oxbridge and the Inns of Court in London, their lives bounded by similar architecture and privilege. Instead of bowing her head and quietly assimilating, Proudman has spent the past decade calling out misogyny in the legal world, managing in the process to alienate many of her male colleagues as well a number of female newspaper columnists, while also triggering a career-threatening disciplinary tribunal. This week she publishes a book on the work to which she has devoted her professional energies: supporting women with violent or controlling partners as they navigate the family courts. Proudman's achievements in this sphere are notable. One campaigner for greater openness in the notoriously untransparent family system (where critical decisions are made about how to organise care of children after divorce) pays effusive tribute to her work, characterising her as a 'brave and persistent disruptor'. A senior colleague at Proudman's chambers, Goldsmith, describes her as an excellent barrister who has achieved remarkable results by championing difficult issues such as coercive and controlling behaviour, by challenging the notion of parental alienation (a claim often used damagingly by fathers against mothers in response to accusations of domestic violence) and focusing attention on marital rape. But Proudman's book, He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court, is also a memoir that attempts to understand the sea of acrimony that she has provoked. 'Why do they dislike me so much?' Proudman wonders, laughing but sounding momentarily puzzled. 'They think I'm rocking the boat, maybe, causing trouble, pushing the boundaries of the law. Or maybe it's something about exposing the misogyny within the legal system, especially in criticising judges.' The bar has yet to have a #Metoo reckoning. Proudman describes two occasions when she was groped by male barristers, one of whom had been assigned to her as a professional mentor. She cites research indicating that four in 10 female barristers have experienced sexual harassment and sees this as the direct result of a 'predominance of men and male attitudes'. Although more women than men now study law at university, the bar has been slow to catch up; 41% of barristers are women, but just 21% of KCs (senior barristers). Junior women at the bar earn on average 77% of what junior men earn; female KCs earn on average only 67% as much as their male colleagues. In 2024, 62% of court judges in the UK were men, rising to 69% in the high court and 75% in the court of appeal. Proudman, who completed a doctorate at Cambridge, says: 'Women have to work much harder to stand out and show that we are very good at what we do. Look at how many mediocre white blokes there are that seem to be doing just fine.' Comments like these have not won her allies. She emerged into public consciousness a decade ago, when she called out a much older lawyer, a senior partner at a London solicitors' firm, who sent her a message on the business network LinkedIn, complimenting her on her profile picture. 'I appreciate this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!! You definitely win the prize for the best LinkedIn picture I have ever seen,' Alexander Carter-Silk wrote. She replied that she found his message offensive, and that she was using LinkedIn for professional reasons, 'not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men'. She took a screenshot of his message and posted it on Twitter, asking other female lawyers if they were getting similar messages. Within 24 hours her face was on the front of the Daily Mail, flagging an article by columnist Sarah Vine addressing the 'glam lawyer and the Feminazis who hate men who praise their looks'. Vine's article said: 'Heaven help the poor man who actually tries to ask her out on a date, let alone try to get her into his bed. He'd have better luck propositioning a porcupine.' She was on the Mail's front page for two days in a row. The online abuse this unleashed was standard, depressing mid-2010s fare for Twitter (as it then was): she was swiftly dismissed as 'rabid', 'humourless', 'dumb', 'a blockhead', 'whiny', 'malicious' and 'batshit insane' by anonymous trolls. But she was surprised to find some of the worst comments came from male barristers, tweeting under their own names. One wrote: 'If you want to be a shock jock, apply to a radio station. If you want to be a barrister, stop being a cunt.' Another described her as a 'self-publicist who cynically uses women's suffering to promote herself'. Others called her mentally ill and a 'wanker'. She removed herself from social media, but later returned because she recognised that her online profile helped her reach clients in areas she was interested in. For a while she was hurt by the criticism she provoked, but she says she no longer cares very much, having mostly worked out a way to divert the hostility into positive attention for causes she feels strongly about. Along the way, Proudman has concluded that likability is an overrated character requirement unhelpfully foisted on women and girls. 'I think I'm quite a likable person, when you get to know me,' she says. She spends some time amiably attempting to get the coffee machine started, and when this doesn't work she sets off to search the building for glasses of water, determined to be hospitable. 'But as young girls and young women, we are taught to want to be liked, and, for me now, wanting to be liked has largely gone by the wayside. I'm aware some people don't like me and I don't care. I'd rather be understood than liked.' In 2022 she typed a 14-part Twitter thread expressing frustration about a judgment by Sir Jonathan Cohen – who, like a handful of judges and dozens of senior barristers, was a member of the then men-only Garrick Club. Proudman felt the judgment had not taken the allegations of domestic abuse sufficiently seriously; she wrote that she was troubled by Cohen referring to the relationship between a woman and her ex-husband, who was a part-time judge and barrister, as 'tempestuous' and describing the alleged domestic violence as 'reckless'. She wrote that the case had 'echoes of the 'boys' club' which still exists among men in powerful positions'. The Bar Standards Board responded by launching disciplinary proceedings, on the grounds that the thread 'inaccurately reflected the finding of a judge on a case in which she was instructed', and that Proudman had behaved in a way 'which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public placed in her and in the profession'. She faced a 12-month suspension and £50,000 fine, but in December, after three years, all charges against her were dropped and the case was dismissed. The panel ruled that her tweets were protected under freedom of expression rules, and that they did not 'gravely damage' the judiciary. She has since launched proceedings against the Bar Standards Board. 'Frankly, I'd like an apology and a sum of money to reflect the pain and distress that I've been put through,' she says. She would also like to understand why her male colleagues who abused her online have not been subject to similar proceedings. Proudman only has just over a decade's worth of career to cover, so her book doesn't have the heft of solicitor Harriet Wistrich's excellent recent memoir Sister in Law, which also tackles the need to remodel the legal system to offer better justice to women. But He Said, She Said is revealing about the hidden world of family courts, where she argues attitudes lag behind other courts because of the absence of routine scrutiny. She wrote it because she wanted to 'expose how the family justice system is failing women and children', and because she felt frustrated at seeing the same systemic failings repeated in case after case. 'A broken relationship and a family court case can happen to anyone,' she writes, 'and almost no one is prepared for what that is like. Nor is there nearly enough recognition of when and how the family court gets it wrong, and the shocking consequences of those decisions on the lives of women and children.' She has acted in cases where a judge has dismissed domestic violence, shrugging it off as 'just a bit of DV', and she has heard judges indulge in victim blaming, diminishing the significance of rape. One judge described an incident of strangulation as a prank, she says. She has secured judgments that recognise gaslighting as a form of domestic abuse, and that acknowledge the dangerous tactic of 'darvo' (deny; attack; reverse victim and offender) that perpetrators use to avoid being held accountable. 'It is women who make up almost three-quarters of domestic violence victims in the UK, and who will more often be asked to recall the painful details of how their partner verbally abused, coercively controlled, physically assaulted or raped them,' she writes. 'It is women who are mostly bringing forward the most serious allegations and who must prove what they are saying, while male respondents can sit back, poke holes in their arguments and cast doubt. And it is women who must face judges who are predominantly male, relying on their understanding of the nuances of domestic abuse and coercive control. Frequently, this feels like a game that women cannot win.' Not that it is a game, as far as Proudman is concerned. She is disparaging about colleagues who have 'jocular conversations' about their cases over lunch before moving on to the next job without a second thought. She dislikes the legal profession's readiness to view wrongdoing as a 'matter of technical debate' that should 'never be viewed through the lens of fairness or justice'. If her passion gets under some people's skin, so be it. The same goes for her high public profile: she sees self-promotion as an important part of carving out her practice. She takes care not to look too formal and stuffy in photos, occasionally posing in legal gowns and bare midriff, in order, she says, to show younger women that there is a place for them at the bar, in deliberate opposition to 'all these male, crusty white barristers'. She wants students to look at her and think: 'She looks cool. She's a barrister. I could do that.' He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court by Dr Charlotte Proudman is published on 1 May by W&N (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Yahoo
‘I was a marked woman': Meet Britain's most controversial barrister
Charlotte Proudman likes to rattle cages. A barrister specialising in family law and domestic abuse cases, she has won several awards, including Woman of the Year at the Women and Diversity in Law Awards last month, in recognition of her campaign to make the Garrick Club open its doors to women. And she has made a lot of headway in the family courts, challenging legislation that discriminates against women in cases of domestic abuse and parental custody, which she writes about in her new book, He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court. But Proudman, 36, has also had a lot of flack. Her constant battle against inequality and her fight for justice in the legal system has led to her being branded a Feminazi by the Daily Mail, and a lot worse ('a joke in legal circles', 'a c—t', an 'insufferable w—ker') by others in her profession. I meet Dr Proudman, as she is known (she has a PhD, in female genital mutilation law and policy), at Goldsmith Chambers at the Temple in London. I had been slightly disconcerted to see a photograph of her on her website, commissioned by King's College, Cambridge, where she did her doctorate between 2013 and 2017, posing in a long legal gown with a bare midriff, next to Ted, her cavapoo, on a chair, but here she is in person – composed, friendly and sympathetic, wearing chunky pearls and a black suit. The best possible riposte to all the contentiousness and criticism levelled against her is her recent victory in court. It was not a case that she was representing as a barrister – it was a case against her, brought by the Bar Standards Board (BSB). In March 2022, a judge named Jonathan Cohen ruled against her in a high-profile divorce case which involved allegations of coercive control, in which Proudman had been representing the wife. Proudman thought the judgment unfair, and took to Twitter (as it was then) to complain that the judge had not taken the issue of domestic abuse seriously. In a 14-thread tweet, she posted a summary of the judgment, and commented that 'this judgment has echoes of the 'boys' club' that still exists among men in powerful positions'. As a result, she was taken to a tribunal by the BSB, which – she claims in her book – had been looking for a test case to establish what barristers could and couldn't say on social media about judges and their judgments. It was completely unexpected, and she was terrified, she says. 'It could have been the end of my career.' In December 2024, after the BSB had pursued it relentlessly for three years, the case was finally dismissed. It was 'a clear instance of sex discrimination', Proudman said at the time. Does she mean if a man had done this they would not have held him to account? 'We know they wouldn't, because we had the comparators – male barristers who had said things about judges and nothing had happened to them. And they didn't just investigate me or give me a warning – they went full force, five charges. It's not insignificant. They really went for it. I do think it was very personal.' Proudman is now taking action against the BSB for discrimination. A senior KC, who does not want to be named, told me that he thought the BSB was entirely wrong to have brought the case, as did many of his colleagues. 'My sense is that there was almost no support at all for the BSB proceedings. Apart from anything else, we all think the BSB are f—king useless.' He says that opinions fell into different categories: 'A lot of people felt some sympathy for Charlotte, but also thought she had brought it on herself, because why did she need to say it publicly, even if it's true? It was asking for trouble. And there is a small group – like me – who thought that the proceedings were wholly wrong, and that the failure of the BSB/SRA [Solicitors Regulation Authority] to tackle the kind of abuse that Charlotte has received from other professionals over the years was also wrong.' Proudman is more philosophical about the abuse she gets these days, though she still finds it hard to take. 'I realise that it comes with the territory. I really struggle when it comes from colleagues.' She does get support from colleagues too, she says, but 'largely in private, because they don't want to speak publicly about it. The loudest voices are often very critical and nasty, and the supportive ones are the quiet ones – so it doesn't look very balanced.' It all stems back to an incident that happened 10 years ago, she believes: the LinkedIn incident. The writing was already on the wall when she started out. She was called to the bar in 2010, and was taken aback by 'the most male environment' she had ever encountered, especially after growing up in an all-female household and going to a university in which 60 per cent of the students were female (she originally got a degree in law and sociology at Keele University in 2009, followed by an MPhil in criminology at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 2011). At lunch with someone who had been assigned as her mentor, she was told, 'You've done really well to get here and get this far, but you'll never make it.' Subsequently, when she applied for work experience at a firm of solicitors, one of the partners suggested that, instead of submitting a CV, she should send a bikini picture instead. In 2015 she received a message in her inbox on LinkedIn, saying, 'Delighted to connect, I appreciate this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!! You definitely win the prize for the best Linked in [sic] picture I have ever seen…' It was from Alexander Carter-Silk, a senior partner at a London office of solicitors. Taken aback, Proudman replied saying that she found his message offensive as her use of LinkedIn was entirely for professional reasons and 'not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men'. Then she put a screenshot of the message she had received on Twitter, asking if anyone else had had similar approaches. She was immediately branded an attention seeker, though in fact the attention was instigated by Roll On Friday (a 'cheeky and irreverent' legal website) which retweeted her. From there it was picked up by the Daily Mail. 'Heaven help the poor man who actually tries to ask her out on a date, let alone try to get her into his bed,' wrote the ever sympathetic and sisterly Sarah Vine. 'He'd have better luck propositioning a porcupine.' Two days on the front page of the Mail 'set me up as target practice for the media. I was a marked woman.' Proudman is an only child who grew up in Leek, in Staffordshire. Her mother was a teacher, and a single parent – her father was an alcoholic who died in a car accident when he was drunk when Proudman was four. Her mother was a strong believer in education and ambitious for her daughter, and Proudman's achievements have been pioneering. Her particular speciality is in family law and domestic abuse. In He Said, She Said, she writes in detail about some of the cases she has been involved in, and one of the things she is most proud of is her work in the area of implementing FGM protection orders, together with Forward, a group of lawyers and FGM survivors. Proudman was also responsible for a change in the law at women's refuge centres, where previously, police were able to turn up in full uniform with court orders obtained by perpetrators that the women were fleeing from, which revealed their whereabouts and put the refuges in very difficult positions. On the day I interviewed her she was about to achieve another first, in a case where a woman she had represented whose original allegations of rape and domestic abuse had been dismissed 'in error' (which was reversed two years later) was given the legal right to talk publicly about her case. (The family courts used to be entirely secret, but recently have been open to reporting, after a two-year pilot. Previously, journalists could report what they witnessed in family courts but this will be the first time that a parent has made a successful application to speak out without having to go through the press.) In this case, the judge ruled that the woman's ex-partner, who had countered her accusations with his own – of 'parental alienation' – should have no contact with the child. Parental alienation is something that Proudman takes particular issue with. Its premise is that one parent has turned the child against the other, and it is often used by the estranged parent to get access to the children, or to overturn custody arrangements. It is not new, but has become increasingly weaponised in custody cases, and the reason it's so alarming to Proudman is the fact that allegations of parental alienation are certified by psychologists who are often unregulated. 'Parental alienation syndrome was first recognised by Richard Gardner, in the USA in the 1980s,' she says, and although it has been discredited in the States, 'it's made its way over here. It never used to be as prevalent as it is now – I see it in 98 per cent of the domestic abuse cases that I am involved in. 'It's a contentious label which is now a whole industry – you have a lobby of so-called experts, regulated and unregulated, who specialise in it and purport to diagnose it when they're instructed, which can result in a transfer of residence for the child.' Even if that means returning the child to the parent from whom they have been removed. 'This 'expert' will meet the parents and talk to the children and then offer their opinion in court. Sometimes they will try to pathologise with some sort of psychological condition – histrionic personality disorder is quite a common one we see mothers labelled with, though I certainly don't see fathers labelled with personality disorders. Then, if the experts have a veneer of legitimacy, the courts accept their opinion. 'In this country 'psychologist' is not a regulated title. And it's lucrative – if you win one [case] you get a name for yourself, and you're instructed in more cases, and that becomes your niche.' He Said, She Said details many of the cases in which she has acted to try to protect women in the family courts, and there are some horrific stories: the English girl, Lisa, who had escaped with her child from her abusive partner in Australia, and was ordered to return, even though she feared for her safety; Beth, who wanted another child but whose husband said she had to agree to certain 'conditions', including that she should 'entertain all sex requests – whenever and whatever – with a smile on my face and as a willing participant'; Mary, whose allegation of being raped and strangled by her ex-husband was disbelieved by a judge who, in part, deemed her 'too intelligent' to have allowed it to happen. Or Daria, who was ordered back to Sudan with her daughter, even though the 11-year-old was likely to be subjected to FGM, from which two of Daria's sisters had died. It must be distressing to lose cases, having exhausted all legal avenues. How does Proudman detach herself? 'I'm not sure that I do detach from them – I suppose that's why I'm the person I am. I'm a campaigner as well as a barrister, and that's why I've written the book. Many people – and I'm not criticising them, in some ways I'm quite envious – will finish a case and move on to the next, and that's it for them. But for me – especially if it goes wrong and I think the decision is unjust – I will rant and rave about it, and try everything to secure some sort of justice for these people. I will make it my mission.' She says in the book that she keeps going 'because misogyny and sexism are everywhere in the legal profession'. Does she get disillusioned? Is it mainly male judges she is referring to, or is it to do with a certain generation? Statistics suggest that diversity within the courts is slowly improving, she says, 'but it's at a glacial pace. Change is so incredibly slow. 'I think we probably have to recognise that the legal establishment is still very white, male and privileged. If you look at the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court, the vast majority of those sitting in really senior positions are white public school/Oxbridge-educated men who just don't have the same experience as many of the people in front of them – and I do think that you need a judiciary which reflects the society we live in, so they can understand some of their experiences and what people have been through.' 'There is a substantial 'old school' element,' says my anonymous source, the senior KC, 'who are not wholly unthinking, and I'm sure don't consider themselves misogynistic, but in fact inhabit a world steeped in sexism. They are perfectly happy for women to succeed, and recognise the value and merit of successful women colleagues, but they want them to do so within the established norms of the profession. What they don't like is those who want to do it on their own terms, which I think Charlotte Proudman represents: making a fuss, calling out behaviours, and drawing attention to the massive gender pay disparities. I think that there is a deep-seated defensiveness in the profession, which remains (white) male-dominated at senior levels. I also have a female colleague who feels that Charlotte is doing women no favours, because she is just picking fights. Everyone agrees that women should be treated fairly, but we would all much prefer it if they just quietly got on with the job, instead of bleating about the various insults, obstacles, aggressions etc with which they are confronted.' Which is not Proudman's style. Is she now a member of the Garrick? 'I wish! I'm still waiting for my invitation – it must have got lost in the post. I hope in time they will see it as a real benefit when they actually start opening their doors to more women, rather than the three or four or whatever it is now. I'd want to be a member in order to bring in other women, which is probably why they don't want me.' What advice might she give to aspiring female barristers? 'Just carry on even in the face of adversity – and never give up,' she says, and adds a quote from American lawyer and activist Florynce Kennedy, with which she ends her book: 'Rattle cages, make noise. Cause trouble.' (Hear, hear.) The following is an extract from He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court I squinted into the laptop screen to catch my first sight of my newest client. A pale, cautiously smiling face peered back. We were about to begin a conversation that had been long in the making. Florence was not the first client who had approached me directly to represent her, but she was undoubtedly the only one who'd had to fight in court to earn representation in the first place. Her legal battle against a situation she felt was fundamentally unjust had now been going on for several years. What made this all the more remarkable was that she was still just 15 years old. Florence had been put in this unconventional, unreasonable situation because, five years earlier, her father had obtained a court order saying that she should live with him. After her parents separated when she was eight, she had been living happily with her mother and having regular contact with her father. But because there were, as there often are, difficulties with a child being passed between two parents at odds with each other, the case ended up in court. As a result, Florence was ordered to move from living with the parent she chose to the one she had not. When her case crossed my desk in mid-2021, I was still unfamiliar with the approach her father had used to achieve this, though it would soon become a regular part of my work. I was about to learn about 'parental alienation', the allegation that one parent has turned the children against the other. Soon I would see the almost extraordinary power this can have in court: how a deceptively simple argument, dressed up as science and supported by carefully chosen experts, can be used to upend children's lives, persuading the court that they should live with the parent who was accused of being abusive in the first place. I was late to the party in a case whose history went back seven years to when her parents had separated. Initially, Florence had lived with her mother and had regular contact with her father. In the legal proceedings that began after contact broke down, the court found the father had been abusive on several occasions – he had slapped the mother and 'held Florence down and shouted at her when she had a tantrum'. Far from the case going against him, however, it was turning his way. As his own abusive behaviour was being established by the court, in parallel, the narrative of parental alienation was being established. A child psychiatrist interviewed Florence and gave evidence to the effect that the problems over contact had arisen 'because of the mother's distress and unresolved angry feelings about the breakdown of the relationship [which] was being communicated to Florence'. The judge picked up this thread and concluded that the mother 'was not giving Florence permission in an emotional sense' to have a relationship with her father. She ordered the contact arrangements to be reversed, and for Florence to live with her father. It was a classic example of how parental alienation can be used to flip a family dispute on its head. The father did not have custody of Florence and was found by the court to have been abusive to both her and the mother. Yet with the right expert in his corner, Dr Mark Berelowitz, he had been able to persuade the same judge that the mother was the real root of the problem and to rule that Florence should instead live with him. 'Parental alienation' was the silver bullet that allowed this man to override the objections of his child, and the reality of his former abuse, to get the court to rule in his favour. From the age of 12, Florence had been repeatedly trying to gain her own legal representation, with support from her maternal family, to make the case that she should live primarily with her mother. One judge had refused this, and another actually banned her from making these applications for two years. After the two-year prohibition had passed, she applied again and was rejected once more. Only when she appealed this to the High Court did a decision finally go her way. With Florence then nearing the age of 16, at which point her wishes could no longer legally be ignored, her father consented, and a judge granted the appeal. Now, finally, she had been granted the right to be independently represented and to put her case in front of a High Court judge, Mrs Justice Frances Judd. I argued that Florence being forced to live with her father did little good for their relationship, just as it was unfair to her and her mother. The guardian recommended that she alternate between parents on a weekly basis, which Florence's father supported. We argued that this would not reflect her wish to live primarily with her mother, and the judge ultimately agreed, ordering an arrangement that saw her granted this right for the majority of each month. As my career has gone on, I have increasingly seen parental alienation as a straw that fathers are keen to offer and which professionals are eager to clutch. That is despite the fact that parental alienation does not exist in any credible medical guidance, is not a recognised syndrome, or a condition that can be formally diagnosed. The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has listed parental alienation syndrome as discredited. The Family Justice Council has also issued draft guidance on parental alienation, stating that instructed experts should be regulated and that 'parental alienation' is not a diagnosable condition or disorder. Yet, in my time as a family law barrister, I have seen it grow rather than diminish in significance. Academic research underlines quite how widespread a legal tactic this has become, weaponised against vulnerable women. In a University of Manchester study, published in September 2023, which assessed and interviewed 45 women who had been through family court proceedings in England after alleging domestic abuse, 39 had been accused of parental alienation. Those mothers described how allegations of alienation 'not only shifted the focus of proceedings once raised but also diminished and often completely sidelined the investigation of [domestic abuse] and child abuse'. Parental alienation is not just junk science and bad law. It is a symptom of how women are too often treated in the family justice system – pathologised, blamed and stripped of their rights. While it is true that one parent can negatively influence their children against the other, such cases are the exception. And they should always be matters of fact for the court to determine, not ones of spurious, quasi-medical diagnosis. Five years on from the original order that had taken her away from her mother, Florence had finally got what she had repeatedly asked for. But it had taken an unreasonable amount of struggling against the system for her to get there. Florence could never get back the years of her childhood she had lost with her mother or the time that she had dedicated to a personal legal battle that started when she was not yet a teenager. He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court, by Dr Charlotte Proudman (W&N, £20), is out on 1 May. Preorder now by clicking here Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
17-04-2025
- Telegraph
‘I was a marked woman': Meet Britain's most controversial barrister
Charlotte Proudman likes to rattle cages. A barrister specialising in family law and domestic abuse cases, she has won several awards, including Woman of the Year at the Women and Diversity in Law Awards last month, in recognition of her campaign to make the Garrick Club open its doors to women. And she has made a lot of headway in the family courts, challenging legislation that discriminates against women in cases of domestic abuse and parental custody, which she writes about in her new book, He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court. But Proudman, 36, has also had a lot of flack. Her constant battle against inequality and her fight for justice in the legal system has led to her being branded a Feminazi by the Daily Mail, and a lot worse ('a joke in legal circles', 'a c—t ', an 'insufferable w—ker') by others in her profession. I meet Dr Proudman, as she is known (she has a PhD, in female genital mutilation law and policy), at Goldsmith Chambers at the Temple in London. I had been slightly disconcerted to see a photograph of her on her website, commissioned by King's College, Cambridge, where she did her doctorate between 2013 and 2017, posing in a long legal gown with a bare midriff, next to Ted, her cavapoo, on a chair, but here she is in person – composed, friendly and sympathetic, wearing chunky pearls and a black suit. The best possible riposte to all the contentiousness and criticism levelled against her is her recent victory in court. It was not a case that she was representing as a barrister – it was a case against her, brought by the Bar Standards Board (BSB). In March 2022, a judge named Jonathan Cohen ruled against her in a high-profile divorce case which involved allegations of coercive control, in which Proudman had been representing the wife. Proudman thought the judgment unfair, and took to Twitter (as it was then) to complain that the judge had not taken the issue of domestic abuse seriously. In a 14-thread tweet, she posted a summary of the judgment, and commented that 'this judgment has echoes of the 'boys' club' that still exists among men in powerful positions'. As a result, she was taken to a tribunal by the BSB, which – she claims in her book – had been looking for a test case to establish what barristers could and couldn't say on social media about judges and their judgments. It was completely unexpected, and she was terrified, she says. 'It could have been the end of my career.' In December 2024, after the BSB had pursued it relentlessly for three years, the case was finally dismissed. It was 'a clear instance of sex discrimination', Proudman said at the time. Does she mean if a man had done this they would not have held him to account? 'We know they wouldn't, because we had the comparators – male barristers who had said things about judges and nothing had happened to them. And they didn't just investigate me or give me a warning – they went full force, five charges. It's not insignificant. They really went for it. I do think it was very personal.' Proudman is now taking action against the BSB for discrimination. A senior KC, who does not want to be named, told me that he thought the BSB was entirely wrong to have brought the case, as did many of his colleagues. 'My sense is that there was almost no support at all for the BSB proceedings. Apart from anything else, we all think the BSB are f—king useless.' He says that opinions fell into different categories: 'A lot of people felt some sympathy for Charlotte, but also thought she had brought it on herself, because why did she need to say it publicly, even if it's true? It was asking for trouble. And there is a small group – like me – who thought that the proceedings were wholly wrong, and that the failure of the BSB/SRA [Solicitors Regulation Authority] to tackle the kind of abuse that Charlotte has received from other professionals over the years was also wrong.' Proudman is more philosophical about the abuse she gets these days, though she still finds it hard to take. 'I realise that it comes with the territory. I really struggle when it comes from colleagues.' She does get support from colleagues too, she says, but 'largely in private, because they don't want to speak publicly about it. The loudest voices are often very critical and nasty, and the supportive ones are the quiet ones – so it doesn't look very balanced.' It all stems back to an incident that happened 10 years ago, she believes: the LinkedIn incident. 'I was a marked woman' The writing was already on the wall when she started out. She was called to the bar in 2010, and was taken aback by 'the most male environment' she had ever encountered, especially after growing up in an all-female household and going to a university in which 60 per cent of the students were female (she originally got a degree in law and sociology at Keele University in 2009, followed by an MPhil in criminology at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 2011). At lunch with someone who had been assigned as her mentor, she was told, 'You've done really well to get here and get this far, but you'll never make it.' Subsequently, when she applied for work experience at a firm of solicitors, one of the partners suggested that, instead of submitting a CV, she should send a bikini picture instead. In 2015 she received a message in her inbox on LinkedIn, saying, 'Delighted to connect, I appreciate this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!! You definitely win the prize for the best Linked in [sic] picture I have ever seen…' It was from Alexander Carter-Silk, a senior partner at a London office of solicitors. Taken aback, Proudman replied saying that she found his message offensive as her use of LinkedIn was entirely for professional reasons and 'not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men'. Then she put a screenshot of the message she had received on Twitter, asking if anyone else had had similar approaches. She was immediately branded an attention seeker, though in fact the attention was instigated by Roll On Friday (a 'cheeky and irreverent' legal website) which retweeted her. From there it was picked up by the Daily Mail. 'Heaven help the poor man who actually tries to ask her out on a date, let alone try to get her into his bed,' wrote the ever sympathetic and sisterly Sarah Vine. 'He'd have better luck propositioning a porcupine.' Two days on the front page of the Mail 'set me up as target practice for the media. I was a marked woman.' Proudman is an only child who grew up in Leek, in Staffordshire. Her mother was a teacher, and a single parent – her father was an alcoholic who died in a car accident when he was drunk when Proudman was four. Her mother was a strong believer in education and ambitious for her daughter, and Proudman's achievements have been pioneering. Her particular speciality is in family law and domestic abuse. In He Said, She Said, she writes in detail about some of the cases she has been involved in, and one of the things she is most proud of is her work in the area of implementing FGM protection orders, together with Forward, a group of lawyers and FGM survivors. Proudman was also responsible for a change in the law at women's refuge centres, where previously, police were able to turn up in full uniform with court orders obtained by perpetrators that the women were fleeing from, which revealed their whereabouts and put the refuges in very difficult positions. On the day I interviewed her she was about to achieve another first, in a case where a woman she had represented whose original allegations of rape and domestic abuse had been dismissed 'in error' (which was reversed two years later) was given the legal right to talk publicly about her case. (The family courts used to be entirely secret, but recently have been open to reporting, after a two-year pilot. Previously, journalists could report what they witnessed in family courts but this will be the first time that a parent has made a successful application to speak out without having to go through the press.) In this case, the judge ruled that the woman's ex-partner, who had countered her accusations with his own – of 'parental alienation' – should have no contact with the child. Parental alienation is something that Proudman takes particular issue with. Its premise is that one parent has turned the child against the other, and it is often used by the estranged parent to get access to the children, or to overturn custody arrangements. It is not new, but has become increasingly weaponised in custody cases, and the reason it's so alarming to Proudman is the fact that allegations of parental alienation are certified by psychologists who are often unregulated. 'Parental alienation syndrome was first recognised by Richard Gardner, in the USA in the 1980s,' she says, and although it has been discredited in the States, 'it's made its way over here. It never used to be as prevalent as it is now – I see it in 98 per cent of the domestic abuse cases that I am involved in. 'It's a contentious label which is now a whole industry – you have a lobby of so-called experts, regulated and unregulated, who specialise in it and purport to diagnose it when they're instructed, which can result in a transfer of residence for the child.' Even if that means returning the child to the parent from whom they have been removed. 'This 'expert' will meet the parents and talk to the children and then offer their opinion in court. Sometimes they will try to pathologise with some sort of psychological condition – histrionic personality disorder is quite a common one we see mothers labelled with, though I certainly don't see fathers labelled with personality disorders. Then, if the experts have a veneer of legitimacy, the courts accept their opinion. 'In this country 'psychologist' is not a regulated title. And it's lucrative – if you win one [case] you get a name for yourself, and you're instructed in more cases, and that becomes your niche.' 'You need a judiciary which reflects the society we live in' He Said, She Said details many of the cases in which she has acted to try to protect women in the family courts, and there are some horrific stories: the English girl, Lisa, who had escaped with her child from her abusive partner in Australia, and was ordered to return, even though she feared for her safety; Beth, who wanted another child but whose husband said she had to agree to certain 'conditions', including that she should 'entertain all sex requests – whenever and whatever – with a smile on my face and as a willing participant'; Mary, whose allegation of being raped and strangled by her ex-husband was disbelieved by a judge who, in part, deemed her 'too intelligent' to have allowed it to happen. Or Daria, who was ordered back to Sudan with her daughter, even though the 11-year-old was likely to be subjected to FGM, from which two of Daria's sisters had died. It must be distressing to lose cases, having exhausted all legal avenues. How does Proudman detach herself? 'I'm not sure that I do detach from them – I suppose that's why I'm the person I am. I'm a campaigner as well as a barrister, and that's why I've written the book. Many people – and I'm not criticising them, in some ways I'm quite envious – will finish a case and move on to the next, and that's it for them. But for me – especially if it goes wrong and I think the decision is unjust – I will rant and rave about it, and try everything to secure some sort of justice for these people. I will make it my mission.' She says in the book that she keeps going 'because misogyny and sexism are everywhere in the legal profession'. Does she get disillusioned? Is it mainly male judges she is referring to, or is it to do with a certain generation? Statistics suggest that diversity within the courts is slowly improving, she says, 'but it's at a glacial pace. Change is so incredibly slow. 'I think we probably have to recognise that the legal establishment is still very white, male and privileged. If you look at the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal and the High Court, the vast majority of those sitting in really senior positions are white public school/Oxbridge-educated men who just don't have the same experience as many of the people in front of them – and I do think that you need a judiciary which reflects the society we live in, so they can understand some of their experiences and what people have been through.' 'There is a substantial 'old school' element,' says my anonymous source, the senior KC, 'who are not wholly unthinking, and I'm sure don't consider themselves misogynistic, but in fact inhabit a world steeped in sexism. They are perfectly happy for women to succeed, and recognise the value and merit of successful women colleagues, but they want them to do so within the established norms of the profession. What they don't like is those who want to do it on their own terms, which I think Charlotte Proudman represents: making a fuss, calling out behaviours, and drawing attention to the massive gender pay disparities. I think that there is a deep-seated defensiveness in the profession, which remains (white) male-dominated at senior levels. I also have a female colleague who feels that Charlotte is doing women no favours, because she is just picking fights. Everyone agrees that women should be treated fairly, but we would all much prefer it if they just quietly got on with the job, instead of bleating about the various insults, obstacles, aggressions etc with which they are confronted.' Which is not Proudman's style. Is she now a member of the Garrick? 'I wish! I'm still waiting for my invitation – it must have got lost in the post. I hope in time they will see it as a real benefit when they actually start opening their doors to more women, rather than the three or four or whatever it is now. I'd want to be a member in order to bring in other women, which is probably why they don't want me.' What advice might she give to aspiring female barristers? 'Just carry on even in the face of adversity – and never give up,' she says, and adds a quote from American lawyer and activist Florynce Kennedy, with which she ends her book: 'Rattle cages, make noise. Cause trouble.' (Hear, hear.) The following is an extract from He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court The silver bullet I squinted into the laptop screen to catch my first sight of my newest client. A pale, cautiously smiling face peered back. We were about to begin a conversation that had been long in the making. Florence was not the first client who had approached me directly to represent her, but she was undoubtedly the only one who'd had to fight in court to earn representation in the first place. Her legal battle against a situation she felt was fundamentally unjust had now been going on for several years. What made this all the more remarkable was that she was still just 15 years old. Florence had been put in this unconventional, unreasonable situation because, five years earlier, her father had obtained a court order saying that she should live with him. After her parents separated when she was eight, she had been living happily with her mother and having regular contact with her father. But because there were, as there often are, difficulties with a child being passed between two parents at odds with each other, the case ended up in court. As a result, Florence was ordered to move from living with the parent she chose to the one she had not. When her case crossed my desk in mid-2021, I was still unfamiliar with the approach her father had used to achieve this, though it would soon become a regular part of my work. I was about to learn about 'parental alienation', the allegation that one parent has turned the children against the other. Soon I would see the almost extraordinary power this can have in court: how a deceptively simple argument, dressed up as science and supported by carefully chosen experts, can be used to upend children's lives, persuading the court that they should live with the parent who was accused of being abusive in the first place. I was late to the party in a case whose history went back seven years to when her parents had separated. Initially, Florence had lived with her mother and had regular contact with her father. In the legal proceedings that began after contact broke down, the court found the father had been abusive on several occasions – he had slapped the mother and 'held Florence down and shouted at her when she had a tantrum'. Far from the case going against him, however, it was turning his way. As his own abusive behaviour was being established by the court, in parallel, the narrative of parental alienation was being established. A child psychiatrist interviewed Florence and gave evidence to the effect that the problems over contact had arisen 'because of the mother's distress and unresolved angry feelings about the breakdown of the relationship [which] was being communicated to Florence'. The judge picked up this thread and concluded that the mother 'was not giving Florence permission in an emotional sense' to have a relationship with her father. She ordered the contact arrangements to be reversed, and for Florence to live with her father. It was a classic example of how parental alienation can be used to flip a family dispute on its head. The father did not have custody of Florence and was found by the court to have been abusive to both her and the mother. Yet with the right expert in his corner, Dr Mark Berelowitz, he had been able to persuade the same judge that the mother was the real root of the problem and to rule that Florence should instead live with him. 'Parental alienation' was the silver bullet that allowed this man to override the objections of his child, and the reality of his former abuse, to get the court to rule in his favour. My new book, He Said, She Said, covers a collection of real family court cases that reveal how the system protects some and fails too many. This book is my call to action for change. Out 1 May. Preorder now. 🔗 🔗 — Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) March 20, 2025 From the age of 12, Florence had been repeatedly trying to gain her own legal representation, with support from her maternal family, to make the case that she should live primarily with her mother. One judge had refused this, and another actually banned her from making these applications for two years. After the two-year prohibition had passed, she applied again and was rejected once more. Only when she appealed this to the High Court did a decision finally go her way. With Florence then nearing the age of 16, at which point her wishes could no longer legally be ignored, her father consented, and a judge granted the appeal. Now, finally, she had been granted the right to be independently represented and to put her case in front of a High Court judge, Mrs Justice Frances Judd. I argued that Florence being forced to live with her father did little good for their relationship, just as it was unfair to her and her mother. The guardian recommended that she alternate between parents on a weekly basis, which Florence's father supported. We argued that this would not reflect her wish to live primarily with her mother, and the judge ultimately agreed, ordering an arrangement that saw her granted this right for the majority of each month. As my career has gone on, I have increasingly seen parental alienation as a straw that fathers are keen to offer and which professionals are eager to clutch. That is despite the fact that parental alienation does not exist in any credible medical guidance, is not a recognised syndrome, or a condition that can be formally diagnosed. The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has listed parental alienation syndrome as discredited. The Family Justice Council has also issued draft guidance on parental alienation, stating that instructed experts should be regulated and that 'parental alienation' is not a diagnosable condition or disorder. Yet, in my time as a family law barrister, I have seen it grow rather than diminish in significance. Academic research underlines quite how widespread a legal tactic this has become, weaponised against vulnerable women. In a University of Manchester study, published in September 2023, which assessed and interviewed 45 women who had been through family court proceedings in England after alleging domestic abuse, 39 had been accused of parental alienation. Those mothers described how allegations of alienation 'not only shifted the focus of proceedings once raised but also diminished and often completely sidelined the investigation of [domestic abuse] and child abuse'. Parental alienation is not just junk science and bad law. It is a symptom of how women are too often treated in the family justice system – pathologised, blamed and stripped of their rights. While it is true that one parent can negatively influence their children against the other, such cases are the exception. And they should always be matters of fact for the court to determine, not ones of spurious, quasi-medical diagnosis. Five years on from the original order that had taken her away from her mother, Florence had finally got what she had repeatedly asked for. But it had taken an unreasonable amount of struggling against the system for her to get there. Florence could never get back the years of her childhood she had lost with her mother or the time that she had dedicated to a personal legal battle that started when she was not yet a teenager. He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court, by Dr Charlotte Proudman (W&N, £20), is out on 1 May. Preorder now by clicking here
