Victim-blaming in family court

By MIN Ambassador, 12.07.2026

In June, a new report was released that looks at gender bias and victim-blaming in the UK's family court. ‘Scratching the Surface: Victim‑Blaming and Bias in Family Court Judgments’, has been published by the legal charity Right to Equality as part of their Breaking Bias, Building Justice campaign.

The report tallies with many of the experiences we hear in our role working with survivors of post-separation abuse. You can read the full report here.

"Too many women have told me that the family courts felt like an extension of the abuse that they were trying to escape. The persistent and routine undermining of victim-survivors found in published judgments demonstrates why victims of abuse have such low confidence in being treated fairly in our family justice system. Bias distracts judges from properly assessing risk, their obligation to safeguard, and putting the needs of the children first." 

Dr Adrienne Barnett, Co-Director of Right to Equality

What the report examines

It is notoriously difficult to examine family court proceedings due to restrictions on what can and cannot be shared. For this report, researchers analysed 91 family court judgments from England and Wales involving domestic and sexual abuse. In 72.5% of those judgments, they found at least one instance of judicial victim-blaming. The judgments they looked at were selected at random from 337 published judgments that referenced domestic and sexual abuse, and were then read in full by three researchers.

How the team used AI

Right to Equality worked with herEthical AI, a company that builds AI language models to detect gender-based violence. They trained a model that could identify victim-blaming language in court judgments. This AI tool was used to run a pilot study, helping researchers spot patterns at scale before the team's three human researchers carried out the full, detailed reading of all 91 judgments.

The report also calls for more AI tools, in the form of transcription technology, to be rolled out in family courts. The argument is that if more hearings are accurately recorded and transcribed, it becomes much easier to scrutinise what's actually said in the room, rather than relying on judgments that have already been filtered and written up afterwards.

The types of victim-blaming and bias identified

Across the 91 judgments, researchers found 530 instances of victim-blaming. The majority were made by judges themselves, not by the other party's legal representatives. Three patterns came up again and again:

Discrediting – 233 instances (the most common form)

Behavioural blame – 173 instances

Trivialisation – 99 instances

Discrediting is when a judge questions or undermines a victim's credibility. They might cast doubt on the truthfulness of their account, focusing on inconsistencies in their story rather than the substance of what happened, or implying they have a motive to exaggerate or make things up. Yet we know that domestic abuse causes trauma and that trauma can impact recall, especially in stressful situations such as Family Court. 

Behavioural blame shifts the focus onto how the victim acted, rather than what was done to them. Why didn't she leave sooner? Why did she stay in contact with him? This  places responsibility on the survivor's choices instead of on the abuser's behaviour. It also reinforces the false narrative of a ‘perfect’ victim (and perpetrator) who is expected to act in a certain way. 

Trivialisation minimises the seriousness of the abuse. It can look like downplaying coercive control as "just an unhappy relationship," or treating documented abuse as a minor or historic detail rather than something that should shape decisions about a child's safety. 

62.5% of all the victim-blaming identified in the report was subtle rather than an obvious, glaring statement. It was woven into the language of the judgment itself, which is exactly why it can be so hard for victims and their legal teams to challenge. This also mirrors the reality of coercive control where subtle behaviours and language have bigger consequences and meaning. 

The report also found a consistent gendered pattern in how these biases played out: mothers' behaviour was closely scrutinised and criticised, while fathers' conduct was more often contextualised or minimised. Women were also far more likely than men to be described as "emotional" by judges.

Why more training is required

Perhaps it's not as shocking as it should be that the majority of victim-blaming statements were made by judges. Family court is where some of the most painful, high-stakes decisions in a person's life are made, including who their children live with and how safe they will be. If the people making those decisions are operating, even unconsciously, with biased assumptions about victims and abusers, those biases impact the outcomes for real families.

Unlike criminal courts, there are currently no practice directions against victim-blaming in family courts. That gap means there's been no formal mechanism to challenge this culture. It has been allowed to go largely unaddressed for years, despite reforms like the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.

Why more needs to be done

The title, "scratching the surface," is an acknowledgment that this report is limited in how much it can look at, and that more needs to be done. Only a small fraction of family court cases are ever published, which means the true scale of victim-blaming in the system is almost certainly far greater than these findings show. It's also important to remember that every statistic represents a real person. These aren't numbers. They're people's lives, decisions about children's safety, and futures shaped by a single judgment.

What the report calls for

The report was presented to MPs in Parliament on 11 June 2026. It calls for:

A government-funded increase in the number of published family court judgments

Mandatory judicial training on gender bias and victim-blaming, designed with specialist domestic abuse organisations, specifically targeting the misuse of "rape myths" and family stereotypes

Annual transparency data published at local level by the Family Justice Board

Prioritising family courts in the government's planned rollout of AI transcription tools

Why this report matters

For too long, family courts have been a tool in the hands of abusers to perpetuate abuse and maintain control over ex-partners. Many of our team have first-hand experience of the family court system and have been failed by it. The women we work with tell us about the victim-blaming and retraumatisation that takes place. Change is happening, but it's slow and cumbersome. Until improvement comes, children and safe parents will suffer. Action is needed, and we hope reports such as this will fuel that action, and help people who are fortunate not to have suffered at the hands of the family court themselves to see the damage it can inflict.  

If you are or have suffered, do reach out for help. You can be sure you are far from alone.