Expert reports used in four private family law cases should be provided to a journalist but it is ‘necessary and proportionate’ to restrict publication of their contents, a High Court judgment has said.

Journalist Jessica Bradley applied for access to documents in four private family law cases, heard between 2020 and 2025. She attended a hearing in one of the cases and a transparency order was made. Bradley sought access to the expert psychological reports of Dr Maria Downs, Cafcass reports, and all final orders and judgments as well as permission to publish and communicate the contents of the expert reports and the final orders.

Mr Justice Poole said Bradley’s application went ‘well beyond what the recently introduced Family Procedure Rules PD12R [that transparency orders will generally give a report access to certain case documents and permission to publish those documents subject to any prohibitions on identification] anticipates in terms of access to the court file and permission to publish information about proceedings’.

The judgment in Jessica Bradley v CM & Ors noted that ‘all four mothers in the four cases have written to the court to support the application’ and though none ‘expressed a wish to speak publicly about their cases’ they had ‘firm views’.

‘They each believe that it is in the public interest for the processes by which expert evidence is given to the court and the court makes decisions should be transparent,’ it added.

The judge ‘considered it important’ to seek the views of the children involved in the cases who were able to express a view. All the children who expressed a view were ‘either supportive or at least do not oppose the application in their case provided that their anonymity is preserved’. 

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The judge was fully satisfied the objective of the applications was to enable public scrutiny of the way courts decide cases and to enable public understanding of the justice system. There was ‘significant’ public interest in understanding how the issue of alienating behaviour is and has been addressed in the family court, he said. 

Granting Bradley’s application, the judge said doing so meant ‘open justice would be served’. He added: ‘I am satisfied that there is a strong public interest in furthering understanding of how courts hearing private family cases deal with issues not just of alienating behaviour but also of the strong resistance of some children to spending time with the parent with whom, following parental separation, they do not live. The use of expert psychological evidence in such cases is also of considerable public interest.

‘Without transparency the Family Court cannot be fully accountable for the decisions its judges make, decisions which can have lifelong implications for the families involved.’

The orders should be provided to Bradley once ‘suitably anonymised’.