The Teenager Who Took On the Family Courts and Won

TBIJ reported the story of a girl pseudonymised as Florence, who was taken from her mother aged 10 and spent five years battling to reverse court orders influenced by expert evidence on “parental alienation”. So desperate was Florence for help that she wrote directly to Sir Andrew McFarlane, the most senior family court judge in England and Wales — and received no response. The case illustrates how the introduction of parental alienation by an expert can “flip a family conflict on its head”, and the near-impossible position children find themselves in when the system fails them.

Source: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 13 April 2026