Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I shall speak to Amendment No. 26. The Bill reinforces the present position, but it does not take into account the standard response to allegations of child sexual abuse arising in private family law proceedings. In practice, if a mother makes an allegation of child sexual abuse against her former partner, she may be urged to agree to a psychiatric assessment voluntarily. If the assessment indicates that she is suffering from a mental health problem, she is then often viewed as an unreliable witness. The assessment rarely takes into account the fact that because she has had an abusive partner she will be suffering from anxiety, depression, panic attacks or post-traumatic stress as a result. If the mother consequently does not comply with a contact order, it may be enforced as a transfer of residence—the child may be ordered to live with the alleged sex abuser without that person having to submit to a specialist risk assessment by an appropriate organisation such as the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. One partner is subject to tests; whereas the other partner is not. I referred earlier to the House of Lords judgment Re H & R (Child sexual abuse: Standard of proof) [1996], which requires the court to set a higher standard of proof than the simple balance of probabilities in cases involving ““more serious allegations””. That may happen even in cases where a child has done a memorandum interview disclosing abuse to the police. That approach protects the human rights of the abuser but does not protect children who may be at risk of harm. In these cases the court should be able to specify that unsupervised contact or residence will be conditional on the alleged abuser submitting to risk assessment by an appropriate organisation working in domestic violence or sexual abuse issues. The amendment calls for the deletion of Clause 11A(6)(a) because its emphatic statement that no individual may be required to undergo medical or psychiatric examination, assessment or treatment could discourage the court from even considering the need for specialist risk assessment in cases involving child sexual abuse.