Justin Ageros, Erin’s barrister
----------------------------------------------------
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Gill, who claims to have given evidence in up to 200 cases, described herself to the court as a “psychologist, forensic assessor and forensic consultant”. However, McFarlane wrote, she does not have any clinical or therapeutic practice in which she sees patients and is not eligible to register with the Health and Care Professions Council. Despite this, Gill was put forward by the children’s guardian from Cafcass to provide expert evidence in Erin’s case in April 2019. At the time, Erin had no legal representation. Gill was paid about £16,000 to assess the family and filed a report that was more than 100 pages long. In it, she said Erin was “projecting vengeful anger from her childhood relationship with her mother” against her partner and, as a result, the children were being alienated from him. They should move to live with him, Gill advised. McFarlane said Smith “fell into a basic error” by not establishing the facts of the case before seeking Gill’s opinion. At the conclusion of Gill’s evidence, and without hearing from any other witness, Smith adopted Gill’s findings as the court’s findings.
By the time Gill gave evidence, Erin had a lawyer, Fenella Cooil, who argued that there should have been a “factfind” hearing to determine the truth of those allegations. That hearing should have been before Gill gave evidence and the children’s guardian – who aligned herself with Gill – made a final recommendation about where the children should live. The allegations, if proven, Cooil argued, were important context. Instead, Smith abandoned the idea of a factfind – because Gill said her recommendation wouldn’t change even if the court found Erin had been abused."
--------------------------------------------------------
GIST: "A top judge has issued seismic new guidance that unregulated psychologists should not give evidence in family court.
The firm ruling makes it next to impossible for courts to justify using unregulated experts like Melanie Gill, whose assessments have resulted in mothers losing access to their children. It also sets the stage for other families in similar circumstances to have their rulings re-examined – potentially via a new and more affordable route.
In January, Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family division, overturned a “fundamentally flawed” ruling that led to a mother being separated from her two children for nearly six years.
The judge in that case, District Judge Smith, had relied on evidence from Gill, an unregulated psychologist who diagnoses “parental alienation”, a discredited psychological theory. Gill had claimed the mother, who we are calling Erin, had “alienated” her children from their father.
Her daughter and son, then aged twelve and nine, were removed from Erin’s care on Gill’s advice in December 2019 and she was banned from seeing them. She had no contact with them until January and November last year respectively.
It is extraordinary and unthinkable that one day [Erin’s] kids were living with her full time and the next they were not and she didn’t see them for five years.
Justin Ageros, Erin’s barrister
Since overturning Smith’s findings, McFarlane has published his judgment, saying unregulated psychologists shouldn’t be used by the courts unless there is no alternative.
Significantly – given his position as the most senior family court judge in England and Wales – he also supported the creation of a working group that would create an affordable way for other families to challenge rulings based on the evidence of unregulated psychologists.
Gill, who claims to have given evidence in up to 200 cases, described herself to the court as a “psychologist, forensic assessor and forensic consultant”. However, McFarlane wrote, she does not have any clinical or therapeutic practice in which she sees patients and is not eligible to register with the Health and Care Professions Council.
Despite this, Gill was put forward by the children’s guardian from Cafcass to provide expert evidence in Erin’s case in April 2019. At the time, Erin had no legal representation.
Gill was paid about £16,000 to assess the family and filed a report that was more than 100 pages long. In it, she said Erin was “projecting vengeful anger from her childhood relationship with her mother” against her partner and, as a result, the children were being alienated from him. They should move to live with him, Gill advised.
McFarlane said Smith “fell into a basic error” by not establishing the facts of the case before seeking Gill’s opinion. At the conclusion of Gill’s evidence, and without hearing from any other witness, Smith adopted Gill’s findings as the court’s findings.
In particular, Smith did not examine abuse allegations made by each of the parents. They included claims made by Erin against the father of physical abuse and marital rape that were corroborated by police and medical evidence, Smith was told.
By the time Gill gave evidence, Erin had a lawyer, Fenella Cooil, who argued that there should have been a “factfind” hearing to determine the truth of those allegations. That hearing should have been before Gill gave evidence and the children’s guardian – who aligned herself with Gill – made a final recommendation about where the children should live. The allegations, if proven, Cooil argued, were important context. Instead, Smith abandoned the idea of a factfind – because Gill said her recommendation wouldn’t change even if the court found Erin had been abused.
Cooil’s argument, McFarlane wrote in his judgment, was “entirely correct”. He said that both the management of the case and the way Smith made his core findings were “fundamentally flawed”.
The father, who has consistently denied all the allegations against him, declined to attend the high court hearing in January or send legal representation. At the hearing, McFarlane made a new order that Erin’s son should live with her. Erin’s daughter, who is now 18, was not involved in proceedings.
‘Every agency at fault’
McFarlane said that although Gill’s role was of “some importance”, his judgment was not “about one person”.
Every agency involved in Erin’s case had been at fault. “By ‘every agency’ I am referring to Cafcass, the children’s solicitor, the local authority and the court,” he wrote.
stem to act, as it should have done, in discharging its responsibility to protect the children and to prioritise their welfare needs.”
He explained his ruling was about people who present as psychologists and are willing to be instructed in family cases but who are “neither registered nor chartered as psychologists”.
Erin’s successful legal bid relied on new information, including 2024 guidance for judges that says experts shouldn’t be asked to look for “parental alienation” – the idea a child has rejected their parent because they have been manipulated by the other.
McFarlane said that, even though the guidance came later, it was “a matter of concern” that Gill had been endorsed by the court despite never taking on patients or clients in clinical practice outside court proceedings.
Melanie Gill claims to have given evidence in up to 200 family court cases
James Manning/PA via Alamy
At the January hearing McFarlane said it would not be appropriate to criticise Gill because she’d not been involved in the new legal process. However, after being told she’d claimed online to be “exonerated” by a judgment he’d given three years earlier, he said he wanted to set the record straight.
In the case known as Re C McFarlane had addressed the issues of parental alienation and experts, but suggested any pseudoscience shouldn’t be accepted by courts and flagged the need for rigour in choosing experts – because, confusingly, anyone can call themselves a psychologist.
In his new judgment McFarlane wrote: “If such a claim was made by Ms Gill, she has fundamentally misunderstood the court’s judgment in Re C which was critical of her claim to any form of expert qualification and which strongly cautioned any court in the future from instructing an expert, such as Ms Gill, who is neither registered nor regulated.”
He said he was sufficiently concerned by the instruction of “an expert such as Gill” in Erin’s case and others that he would go further than in Re C and give “firm guidance”.
In future, courts shouldn’t permit the use of an expert psychologist unless they’re registered with a relevant statutory body, or chartered by the British Psychological Society, McFarlane wrote. But he said judges could make an exception “where there are clear reasons for doing so” – for example if no such expert is available. In such an event a judge should set out their reasons in a short judgment, he added.
[The judgment] strongly cautioned any court in the future from instructing an expert, such as Ms Gill, who is neither registered nor regulated.
Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family court division
Gill asserts she is well-qualified to perform the role of expert witness in family proceedings and that she has years of specialist training and expertise. In a 2023 case, she told the court: “I have been challenged and questioned on my qualifications in every single private law case I have ever undertaken and I have never been criticised.”
It is within the current rules for judges to use their discretion when it comes to choosing an expert witness.
Erin, who has never accepted Gill’s analysis or the underlying claim about her own mother, has undertaken a “sustained and tenacious quest” to have that evidence overturned, said Justin Ageros, her barrister.
Ageros welcomed McFarlane’s “really important” judgment. “It makes clear it is the judge’s job to decide what has happened, it’s not the job of an expert,” he told us. “That should have been obvious but it was lost sight of in this case, with disastrous consequences.”
He added: “It is extraordinary and unthinkable that one day [Erin’s] kids were living with her full time and the next they were not and she didn’t see them for five years. It is appalling that that was sanctioned by the state.
“She could have pretended to accept the Melanie Gill hypothesis but it’s to her absolute credit that she stuck to her guns and never gave up on her kids.”
What’s next?
The committee that sets the rules for the family courts is reviewing the results of a consultation on a proposal to ban unregulated experts from being instructed by judges. A decision is expected soon. Watch this space."
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026-02-27/dont-use-unregulated-psychologists-top-judge-rulesPUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
