Family courts show ‘widespread’ gender bias and victim-blaming, report finds

TL;DR

• 1

  Victim-blaming showed up in nearly three-quarters of the judgments reviewed — Right to Equality’s report, Scratching the Surface, found 72.5% of 91 published family court judgments in England and Wales contained at least one instance of judicial victim-blaming, with 530 total instances across 66 cases.

• 2

  The bias was gendered, with mothers judged harder and fathers given more leeway — The report says mothers’ behaviour was “scrutinised intensely” while fathers’ conduct was often contextualised or minimised, including what the authors describe as reliance on rape myths, stereotyping, and scepticism toward mothers.

• 3

  Women interviewed said the court process felt like a continuation of abuse — Rose, who has been in and out of family court since 2014, said her ex-partner “wasn’t scrutinised at all” despite findings of child abuse and rape, while Marie said “the whole culture is victim-blaming” and that her ex used the system “as a weapon”.

• 4

  The report argues the problem is systemic, not just a few bad judges — Rose said the double standard is “embedded throughout” the judiciary and agencies around the family court, and Marie said judges “still mark their own homework” with no meaningful feedback loop or learning from bad decisions.

• 5

  The proposed fixes are more transparency, mandatory training, and even AI tools — Right to Equality recommends publishing 20% of family court judgments chosen at random each month, setting targets for cases involving domestic and sexual abuse, requiring judges to train on gender bias and victim-blaming, and exploring AI to detect biased language in judgments.