The Chorus: Follow the family law money

Having written about the corruption of family law for nearly a decade, I came recently to the conclusion that I might be doing more harm than good. This is because of a mob tendency in the media to adopt a caricature of somebody and repeat it ad nauseam, regardless of the opportunism of its creation. The idea that John Waters was "obsessed with family courts" was a useful one for those with a vested interest to promote, and media people, instead of focusing on the reasons such interests might have for lampooning someone who represented a threat, bought into the caricature with no little glee. This mob syndrome, when it occurs, causes more serious damage than the mere cartooning of an individual: by issuing a warning to anyone who might be contemplating putting a toe in the water, it also ensures that the subject of the caricatured individual's "obsession" remains relatively free from scrutiny.

It is gratifying then to see that my strategy of comparative silence is enabling others to observe the nakedness of the emperor. I was especially interested to read about recent comments by Mr Justice Hardiman in the Supreme Court, criticising the level of fees in family law cases. Such costs, the judge said, "are sometimes very high, out of proportion it would appear to what is involved even in an ample resource case. They can be very burdensome, especially but not exclusively in less prosperous circumstances. Those charging instruction fees or brief fees must bear in mind that they are to be related to the work done and not directly to the asset values of the case". Family law is one of the last uncharted areas of abuse in Irish life – practically everything else having been Magilled, tribunalled or Public Accounted. If the public could be afforded a glimpse into these courts, interest in other forms of abuse would evaporate as people sucked in their breaths in disbelief. The level of corruption processed under cover of secret courts, in no way accountable to democracy or anything resembling real law, is beyond belief. Family law practitioners – among which I include judges, lawyers, social workers and "expert" witnesses – have free rein to intrude in the most sacred and intimate areas of human life, to cast their evidential nets on the basis of whim and caprice, to criminalise minor and everyday transgressions, to brutalise and abuse people with complete impunity and to dish out punishments which wipe out human lives in ways that would make an Iranian hangman green with envy. Costs are but an aspect of this – albeit an important one in that money provides the primary motivation for the circus of corruption. Never forget Deep Throat's timeless advice: "Follow the money". What I find most fascinating is the historical silence of the media in the face of mounting evidence about the obscenities of family law. Some journalists have scratched desultorily at the subject before resuming their obsessions with brown envelopes. Indeed I have noted that, whenever there is a serious public commotion about the iniquities of family law, a team of tame media hacks takes to the field to say what an excellent job the legal profession is doing in "difficult circumstances", with "increasing caseloads" and "limited resources".

In such encomiums, the phrase "the best interests of children" is liberally employed, and the public head, briefly turned by what was glimpsed of the system's grotesque abuses and injustices, is persuaded of a false alarm and reassured into turning away.

There has, for example, been no significant media campaign to demand an end to the in camera rule, which has long existed to protect legal practitioners rather than litigants. One senior editor recently explained to me that the reason he won't oppose the in camera rule is that any relaxation of it would be abused by Independent Newspapers. It didn't seem to occur to him that this is an argument for the abolition of the universal franchise and the right to free speech. I favour an ideological explanation: it is mainly men and children who are destroyed in family law cases – women generally fare very well – and most journalists, being vaguely of feminist sentiment, are reluctant to campaign in a manner that might be opportunistically interpreted as "anti-women".

But a previously unconsidered factor has recently reared its head, and this may well account for the mounting concern of the more intelligent members of the judiciary: the possibility that today's children may be tomorrow's human rights litigants. The legal context provided by, for example, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, will almost certainly ensure that judges, lawyers and "experts" will one day be held accountable for their treatment of children. In a recent article in the Law Society Gazette, Jennifer O'Brien, a specialist family lawyer and a partner in Arthur O'Hagan Solicitors, asked: "At some future point in time, will we plead the in camera rule when claiming ignorance of the impact of this system on children's lives?" It's a question journalists as much as lawyers might ponder.