“Whatever the statistics, there are real children – many now adults – whose childhoods were fractured and who are beyond the age or means to reopen proceedings or appeal.”

Anonymous mother

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Our investigations into unregulated “experts” tilting custody battles in favour of abusive parents has had incredible results.

Court rules have been changed to reduce their influence. Mums are using our reporting to challenge decisions that put their kids at risk from abusive former partners. And Claire Waxman, the UK’s victims commissioner, has asked for a review of all cases where one of these “experts” gave evidence.

Melanie Gill, the psychologist in question, looms large over this area – she claims to have given evidence up to 200 times. Since our exposé, a court has said that her methodology isn’t exactly sound, raising serious questions about how these cases were decided.

But there’s been a setback. The government has rejected Waxman’s demand, saying that while it shares her concerns about unregulated “experts”, a review would not be proportionate. Part of the problem is that the courts don’t even know how many cases Gill has been involved in.

Gill has previously claimed to be the victim of a “witch hunt”, and said feminist campaigners are targeting her.

These cases involve horrific trauma. Women that suffered abuse try to fight to protect their children, but then unregulated psychologists like Gill testify that abuse allegations are attempts to turn the children against their fathers. In some cases, the fathers win and the mothers lose access to their children.

A woman leading a support group for these mothers told us: “For me, and for every mother I know whose children were removed following assessments associated with Melanie Gill, the message that ‘there isn’t enough data’ to justify a public inquiry may be administratively convenient, but it is morally and humanly inadequate. I have lived this trauma; the impact is lifelong. Our lives were all destroyed and the damage to the children unquantifiable.”

A setback like this is normal and we won’t let it stop us from doing our job. The stakes are far too high. We’ll stay on this story, uplifting the voices of these mothers and their families, ensuring their experiences don’t fade into the background.

Earlier this month, we revealed that the UK is the worst in the world for allowing oil and gas drilling in protected areas. The government has issued production licences that overlap with 13,500km² of protected areas – that’s nearly nine times the size of Greater London. Unbelievable, right?

The day we published, Wera Hobhouse, the LibDem MP for Bath, hosted a conversation in parliament with the Ocean Alliance Against Offshore Drilling. (That’s a collection of organisations aligned to oppose... well, you can probably guess.) They were discussing the urgent threat that oil and gas developments pose to the UK’s marine life. Our investigation was brought up several times as evidence of how bad the problem in the UK has become.

That was no coincidence. Our impact producers Grace and Lucy had coordinated with Oceana, the advocacy group behind the alliance, to make sure MPs would see our findings.

That’s because we know that for our investigations to truly make a difference, they need to get to the right people – including advocates pushing for a brighter future. It means we go further than most journalists would to join the right conversations and help secure positive change.

Now Oceana is asking MPs to sign a letter to the government questioning its offshore policy. You can ask your own MP to join the call here.

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

Gold has always been a precious commodity – but now, it is worth more than ever. Late last year prices surpassed $4,000 an ounce, and across Ethiopia's Tigray region, the gold rush can be seen everywhere.

Along the highway that links the regional capital Mekelle with the gold hub of Shire, young children brandish small bags of dust and nuggets at passing cars. Not long ago, this region was the scene of a brutal civil war that broke out in late 2020. By the time a peace deal was signed two years later, more than half a million people were believed to have been killed. In its aftermath, as an economic crisis took hold, opportunistic military men took control of key gold-producing sites.

Read more here. 

Last week, just before Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel was due to testify in a landmark social media addiction trial, the company quietly settled the case.

The timing was curious. It came not long after we’d exposed what Snapchat execs knew about how addictive the features they were pushing were. Our reporting was picked up by other journalists covering the case.

We’d dug emails out of a mammoth lawsuit against several tech giants. Knowing that many of the big media houses would focus mainly on Meta, Facebook’s parent company, we thought we should take a closer look at Snapchat. It’s one of the social media apps most widely used by teenagers and it’s wildly addictive.

The lawsuit Snapchat settled was brought by a 19-year-old woman who alleged that it deliberately designed features such as Filters and Streaks (which track consecutive days users exchange snaps) to be addictive and cause body-image issues. This was what we’d focussed on too.

At the centre of the case were nearly 6,000 pages of court filings that draw on internal emails, research and documents from major social media companies. They document how Snapchat staff had been raising the alarm for nearly a decade. One employee said the Streaks feature caused “mass psychosis”. A senior product manager called it “accidentally addictive” and “somewhat unhealthy”, but said the company wouldn’t remove it because it was too popular.

Snap previously told us the internal messages cited in the case were “cherry-picked” and taken out of context.

TikTok has now also settled with the same plaintiff. But both Snap and TikTok remain defendants in more than a dozen other cases expected this year.

We’ll continue to follow proceedings closely. If you believe in the work we’re doing, then please become a member today.

What happens after you survive a bomb? That’s what people in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine have been finding out over the past few years.

If you are “lucky” enough to emerge from the rubble of your home alive, how do you carry on? What are the impacts on your body and mind? We’ve been covering the health crisis in Gaza after Israel’s bombing campaign killed tens of thousands of civilians and wanted to know more about the long-term problems that survivors face. So we catalogued them.

The result gives you a sense of how every part of your being could be damaged forever after surviving a bomb.

There’s the physical trauma you could experience, of course, but the even more enduring threat is environmental: asbestos from destroyed buildings wafting through the air; industrial chemicals settling on your skin; combustion residues lingering long after the fighting ends. This toxic dust mixture often leads to serious chronic illnesses like respiratory problems or cancer.

In the wake of a ceasefire, it’s worth remembering that these consequences will affect Palestinians living in Gaza for decades.