In custody proceedings, there is a higher likelihood that false accusations of domestic violence are made.
Joe Giglio
We found no Maltese data on how often allegations made in Family Court proceedings are found to be false, so we turned to international research. The largest study available, from Canada, found that 12% of investigated abuse reports linked to custody or access disputes were judged intentionally false, three times the 4% rate across all investigations. Deliberately false allegations are still a minority, and an allegation that cannot be proven is not the same as a false one.How we reached this verdict ↓
Analysis and evaluation
We found no Maltese data on how often allegations made in Family Court proceedings are found to be false, so we turned to international research. It supports the claim. The largest study available found that abuse reports made during custody or access disputes were about three times as likely to be judged deliberately false as reports in general. Even so, deliberately false allegations remain a minority, and most of the research concerns abuse of children rather than violence between parents.
Deliberately false reports are three times as common in custody disputes
Nico Trocmé and Nicholas Bala, writing in Child Abuse & Neglect in 2005, analysed 7,672 child maltreatment investigations in Canada from 1998. Of the investigated allegations linked to custody or access disputes, 12% were classified as intentionally false, compared with 4% across all child maltreatment investigations.
The same study shows why the distinction between false and unproven matters. In custody-related cases, 46% of investigations ended either unsubstantiated or intentionally false, but only 12% were judged deliberate fabrications; the rest were reports made in good faith that could not be confirmed. Of the reports classified as intentionally false, 43% came from non-custodial parents, mostly fathers, 14% from custodial parents, mostly mothers, and 19% from relatives, neighbours or acquaintances. These figures describe where false reports came from, not how many fathers or mothers make them.
Unproven is not the same as false
Two American studies point the same way. Janet Johnston and colleagues, studying 120 divorced families referred for custody evaluation or counselling in California (Family Court Review, 2005), found that about half of the allegations of child abuse, neglect and family violence were substantiated in some way. They did not establish how many of the rest were knowingly fabricated: an allegation can go unproven because of thin evidence, conflicting testimony or the lack of independent witnesses.
Kathleen Faller and Ellen DeVoe examined 215 divorce-related cases involving allegations of child sexual abuse (Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 1995) and classified about 5% as knowingly false. They also separated deliberate inventions from allegations that arose from genuine misunderstanding or suspicions held in good faith.
What the research does not show
None of these studies measures how often parents knowingly fabricate domestic violence allegations against each other to gain an advantage in court. They examine reports of child abuse and neglect, made to child protection services or in custody evaluations, mostly in North America and two decades ago or more. We found no Maltese data on false allegations in Family Court proceedings.
Evaluation
What was said holds. The best large-scale evidence shows that deliberately false abuse reports are more likely when parents are in a custody or access dispute: 12% against 4% in the Canadian data.
Higher likelihood does not mean most allegations are false. In every study, deliberate fabrications are a minority, and many allegations that are never proven were made in good faith. The evidence also concerns abuse of children more than violence between parents, so it supports the direction of the claim rather than a precise rate for domestic violence.
Editorial note
How we assessed this claim
We found no Maltese data on how often allegations made in Family Court proceedings are found to be false, so we turned to international research. We looked for studies that compare how often abuse allegations made during custody or access disputes turn out to be deliberately false, against allegations made in other settings, relying on peer-reviewed research and paying particular attention to the difference between an allegation that is deliberately false and one that simply could not be substantiated.
The claim is about likelihood, and the clearest large-scale data, from Canada, show deliberately false reports to be about three times as common in custody and access disputes as in investigations generally. That is what the speaker said, so the claim is rated True. The research concerns abuse and neglect of children more than violence between parents, and the evidence comes from abroad; both points are set out in the analysis and limitations.
Limitations
- The studies examine allegations of child maltreatment, including child sexual abuse, rather than domestic violence between former partners specifically. Their findings cannot automatically be applied to allegations made by one parent against the other.
- In the Canadian study, allegations were classified as intentionally false by child protection workers, not by courts.
- The American studies used small, specialist samples of families referred for custody evaluation or clinical assessment and are not representative of all separating parents.
- We found no Maltese data on how often allegations made in Family Court proceedings are found to be false.
Sources
- Trocmé N. and Bala N., False allegations of abuse and neglect when parents separate, Child Abuse & Neglect (2005)
- Johnston J.R., Lee S., Olesen N.W. and Walters M.G., Allegations and substantiations of abuse in custody-disputing families, Family Court Review (2005)
- Faller K.C. and DeVoe E., Allegations of sexual abuse in divorce, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (1995)