Goodbye mum: the ruthless fight for child custody
The Slow Newscast
Alice Sandelson
4.6 • 894 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the most difficult questions facing a judge in the family court is which parent should have custody of a child. To help them answer that, judges rely on independent experts to provide an impartial voice in the court. But what happens when the objectivity of those experts is questioned? This is the story of how the family courts have failed some of the children it exists to protect.
Reporters: Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers
Additional reporting: Paul Bradshaw, Serena Cesaro, William Jarrett and Tom Wall
Producer: Matt Russell
Artwork: Lola Williams
Editor: Jasper Corbett
An investigation by Tortoise in partnership with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A family celebration descends into chaos. |
| 0:04.0 | A dark past is revealed. |
| 0:06.0 | Feston, a piercing new opera adapted from Thomas Winterberg's cult film. |
| 0:12.0 | From librettist Lee Hall, nine-time Olivia award-winning director Richard Jones, |
| 0:16.0 | and acclaimed composer Mark Anthony Turnich. |
| 0:20.0 | Feston, from the 11th to the 27th of February at the Royal Opera House. |
| 0:25.1 | Tickets from just £8, book now at rboh.org.uk. Tautus |
| 0:38.0 | Hello, it's Claudia here and you're listening to the slow newscast from Tautus. |
| 0:46.3 | This week, the ruthless fight for child custody. |
| 0:50.3 | Tortoise reporter Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism |
| 0:55.2 | specialise in reporting on the family courts. |
| 0:59.2 | They've reported on a vast range of the child protection issues that are heard by family judges |
| 1:04.4 | and have had to push for landmark legal judgments to be published. |
| 1:09.0 | So they're well versed in the court system. Now, Louise and Hannah |
| 1:13.6 | have teamed up to investigate how this system works and whether the court is failing, the very |
| 1:19.1 | children it exists to protect. I'll hand over to them now. Every child deserves to have a relationship with both parents, and alienation stops that, which cannot be right. |
| 1:36.4 | When it comes to family courts and child custody, there's really one rule. What's best for the children? |
| 1:42.6 | There's clear case law that says that it's in the children's |
| 1:45.2 | best interest to have a meaningful relationship with both parents. And this is a story about |
| 1:50.6 | those best interests, about what happens when parents are at loggerheads because one side alleges |
| 1:56.0 | the other has brainwashed the child against them. Sometimes a child may have witnessed a parent do awful things and they're scared. |
| 2:04.6 | And what do you do when a child says they don't want to see one of their parents? |
... |
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