The Family Court Gag Orders Silencing Women
✋ You’re Told to Speak Up—Until You Do
They tell us to be brave. To leave our abusers. To protect our children. To trust the system. And we do. We walk into courtrooms clutching evidence and fear in equal measure, believing the truth will be enough. But for thousands of women in the UK, the moment they speak that truth aloud, the doors begin to close—and so does their freedom to ever speak again.
In the UK’s Family Court system, mothers who raise concerns about domestic abuse, child safety, or systemic injustice are often met not with protection—but with gag orders, secrecy rulings, and the threat of imprisonment if they dare to talk publicly about their experience.
This isn’t fiction. It’s happening right now. Women are being silenced—not by their abusers, but by the very courts they turned to for protection.
⚖️ What Are Family Court Gag Orders?
Gag orders—formally known as reporting restriction orders—are legal directions made by family courts that prohibit parties (usually the mother) from publicly sharing information about their case. This includes:
Talking to journalists
Posting on social media
Sharing court documents or outcomes
Even discussing the case anonymously
While the intent behind these orders is to protect children’s privacy, in practice, they have often become a tool of suppression, used to prevent public scrutiny of dangerous rulings, systemic failings, and abusive dynamics being upheld by the court itself.
In many cases, these orders are so broad and so strictly enforced that a woman can be threatened with contempt of court just for saying she went to court at all.
🤐 Who Does This Silence Serve?
Let’s be clear: secrecy protects power. And in the Family Court, that power is not always in the hands of the mother or the child.
While the court claims that secrecy is necessary to protect children, it often ends up protecting perpetrators. Gag orders prevent survivors from:
Speaking out about unsafe contact or custody decisions
Raising awareness of biased or abusive rulings
Campaigning for legal reform or media attention
Warning other women who may be at risk
Meanwhile, fathers who are alleged abusers can often weaponise the system, painting concerned mothers as "vindictive," "alienating," or “obsessed.” And once a gag order is in place, those mothers lose the ability to defend themselves publicly—or even tell their own story.
This is not child-centred justice. This is state-sanctioned silencing.
🔒 A Culture of Secrecy, Not Safeguarding
Family courts in England and Wales are closed courts. Unlike criminal courts, they are not open to the public or press by default. This means:
Journalists must seek special permission to attend hearings
Even when allowed in, they are rarely permitted to report names or details
Mothers are often forbidden from sharing their own story, even anonymously
This culture of secrecy has been repeatedly criticised by legal experts, survivors, MPs, and the United Nations. In 2020, the Ministry of Justice’s Harm Panel Report found that the Family Court often shows:
“a systematic minimisation of abuse, an adversarial process that silences survivors, and decisions that put children at risk.”
Women aren’t just being silenced—they’re being punished for protecting their children.
⚠️ Real Women, Real Risks
Many women have already been dragged through the courts for daring to speak.
In 2019, a mother was imprisoned for publishing anonymous blog posts about her court experience. Though she didn’t name her child or the judge, she was jailed for contempt of court.
Others have had gag orders extended indefinitely, preventing them from raising awareness about rulings that placed their children in the care of violent or abusive fathers.
Campaigners like Victoria Haigh and Samantha Baldwin were vilified in the media after breaching gag orders to speak out. Whatever one believes about the full facts of their cases, the message was chillingly clear: if you speak, you will be punished.
Even those who do not name anyone, or post with full anonymity, are often sent legal threats. Many mothers are now so afraid of being jailed, they retreat from public life altogether—erased from their own story.
📣 The Fight for Transparency
There is growing pressure to open up the Family Court. In recent years, journalists like Louise Tickle and organisations like The Transparency Project have been at the forefront of legal battles to allow responsible reporting of cases where the system may be doing more harm than good.
Some family court judges have also begun to publish anonymised judgments online, and in 2023, pilot programmes were launched in Leeds, Cardiff and Carlisle to allow limited media reporting from family hearings.
But these changes are slow, scattered, and often inconsistent. Many women remain gagged while harmful decisions continue unchecked behind closed doors.
🧨 A Feminist Crisis: When the State Silences Women
Make no mistake: this is a women’s rights issue.
It’s about freedom of speech
It’s about the right to safety
It’s about the right to advocate for your child
And it’s about justice being done—and being seen to be done
We cannot talk about women’s liberation, about justice, about bodily autonomy or motherhood, if we are not willing to challenge a legal system that locks women in silence and calls it “protection.”
The Family Court, as it currently functions, is a place where women are often disbelieved, discredited, and discarded. And when they speak up about it, they’re told they’re breaking the law.
That is not justice. That is coercion wearing a legal robe.
✊ What Needs to Change
End blanket gagging orders and allow survivors to share their stories with safeguards in place
Open up the Family Court to scrutiny from journalists and legal observers
Train judges on coercive control and trauma-informed practice
Stop punishing protective parents and start holding abusers accountable
Create clear, fair guidelines for when reporting restrictions are appropriate—and when they are not
Women deserve the right to speak. Children deserve the right to safety. And the public deserves the right to know what’s being done in their name behind closed doors.
🔗 Further Reading & Resources
The Transparency Project – Advocating for open justice in the family courts
https://www.transparencyproject.org.uk
Louise Tickle’s Reporting – Investigative journalist challenging secrecy in the family courts
https://louisetickle.co.uk
Ministry of Justice Harm Panel Report (2020)
Download the full report (PDF)
Article 39 – Children’s rights organisation pushing for transparency and reform
https://article39.org.uk
💬 Closing Words from Sisters for Justice
The truth is powerful. So powerful that some institutions will do anything to contain it. But we will not stop telling these stories. We will not stop demanding transparency. And we will never stop fighting for women who dared to speak and were punished for it.
To every woman silenced by the Family Court: We see you. We believe you. And we will never let your silence go unnoticed.