Globalarrk: Action on Relocation & Return with Kids. Expat Stuck Parent welcomes the Ministry of Justice UK initiative to carry out research for the first time into domestic abuse and the Hague Convention on international child abduction.
Roz Osborne, head of the charity Globalarrk, said she hoped the government analysis would help level the playing field for victims of domestic abuse.
“At the moment, victims do not have access to equal legal support, due to legal aid inequalities, which causes delay or – worse – no legal representation at all for the victim survivor,” she said. “Where respondents do not meet the means and merits test and pay, they can lose substantial funds, even when winning their case, putting them in debt.
“Victims have no access to emotional support in the high court, via a domestic abuse support worker,” she added. Summary hearings do not allow sufficient understanding of the risks victims face, often underestimating the risks. Children’s safety is inseparable from their primary carer’s safety, most often the mother, and this is not recognised.” In addition, she said, children were not acknowledged as victims in their own right, as they are under domestic abuse legislation in the UK.
It is terrible that survivors still do not have equal rights to legal aid in these cases and have no specialist support other than from small charities like GlobalARRK. We hope all this will change urgently.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/22/uk-mothers-domestic-abuse-child-abduction?fbclid=IwY2xjawUnKYdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR71Gkv57qTuSVLrfyNQ_DYDQUHST5YdqkcHpBoePuocv1e5HvS-ZlINYEJF7w_aem_Ebhda7h49QG-jEZjWWYSmg
