Court of Appeal dismisses psychotherapist's bid for family court anonymity

Judges have dismissed an appeal by a witness seeking anonymity in a family court judgment, stating that a witness of fact will ‘generally have no legitimate ground of appeal in respect of adverse findings contained in a judgment’.

Aimee Dover, a psychotherapist, was a witness of fact in a fact-finding hearing relating to private law proceedings. A subsequent judgment made adverse findings about Dover, including ‘several significant criticisms of her professional conduct’. A later judgment on disclosure and publication issues concluded that the judgment should be passed onto the psychotherapist's regulatory body and her employers and that the published judgment should name her. 

In an appellant’s notice, Dover appealed against being named. The father and guardian resisted Dover’s application, while the mother, for whom she appeared, was neutral.

In E (a child), Re, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Warby dismissed Dover's appeal, finding she had opportunities to challenge the findings in the judgment. The Court of Appeal judgment added: ‘Ms Dover had a fair opportunity to instruct her lawyers, and to complain through them, that the judge’s findings against her were flawed and had been arrived at by an unfair process. No such steps were taken. Rather the contrary.

‘The points which the applicant now seeks to raise by way of appeal are ones that could have been but were not raised below. That, in our view, is a matter of significance.’

The judges found that Dover had ‘implicitly accepted the findings’. It would be unfair for Dover to raise new points for the first time on appeal and there was ‘no legitimate complaint of unfairness’, they said.

The judgment said it was important to underline that ‘a witness of fact will generally have no legitimate ground of appeal in respect of adverse findings contained in a judgment, provided the criticisms have been fairly put to the witness in cross-examination for comment or response before the findings are made. A witness who is at risk of adverse findings does not, for that reason, have any right to intervene or to have legal representation’.