The pilot that opened family courts in England and Wales to journalists started in 2023. That’s when TBIJ began covering cases, hiring the UK’s first full-time family courts reporter.

But two years before that, Kate Kniveton had already shown the British public why these courts needed more scrutiny. She’d bravely waived her right to anonymity to reveal that her ex-husband, a former Conservative minister, had violently abused and raped her.

The findings against Andrew Griffiths were made in family court, and included attempted strangulation and rape. (Griffiths denies the allegations.) By the time the ruling was made, Griffiths had lost his seat to Kate and she was the sitting Conservative MP for Burton. The public interest in publishing the decision was clear.

But at the start of proceedings, Kate told us, the first solicitor advising her said that she should continue to let him see their young child. Not doing so might lead to allegations that Kate was “alienating” her child from her abusive ex.

Kate told us: “I took the advice because it was all new to me and I was scared of how a judge would view it if I stopped him seeing [the child]. But I was worried about my child’s safety because he is a risk – and not just to me.”

While Kate said the contact wasn’t right, with Griffiths often erupting during visits, she felt she couldn’t stop it in case the court took a dim view. Luckily, a judge did eventually intervene. Griffiths was barred from having any direct contact with his child.

There’s a growing trend of mothers accused of parental alienation having their children removed by the family courts, even when there is evidence of domestic abuse by the other parent. Courts have apparently accepted this highly contested concept and accepted ‘expert’ evidence from unregulated psychologists.

Hannah Summers, our family courts reporter, has written about all of this, and on the harms mothers and children have suffered. In one case, our team went undercover and revealed the extreme views one of the psychologists involved in many of the cases was pushing.

It’s not been for nothing. There’s a sea change in how parental alienation is understood and a courts oversight body issued new guidance last year warning that the concept is too often used by abusive parents.

But as Kate told us, the law still instructs judges to focus on both parents having contact with their children. But where there are allegations of abuse, this starting point is problematic. “Judges are going by the law and the law is wrong,” she said.

ITV is airing a documentary about Kate’s story tomorrow. I’ll be watching.

Breaking the Silence: Kate’s Story will air on Sunday on ITV at 10.20pm

It’s been inspiring to see Hannah’s work – alongside others investigating the family courts – truly start to shift the conversation on parental alienation over the past few years. As far as we know, Hannah’s still the only full-time family courts reporter in the UK. Which makes sense – our job isn’t to cover the stories everyone else is looking at, but to dig into details hidden from view.

Our Insiders – the membership community at the heart of our newsroom – help up keep on these stories and bring them to you. With membership, we can maintain our independence and keep investigating.

Factchecked!

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

Did you know?

Action Fraud received nearly 800 reports of QR fraud in the year to April 2025, with victims losing a total of £3.5m. Fraud now accounts for 40% of all crime in the UK, yet only 1% of policing resources are being used to fight it.

Find out more

Car parks have become a common target of “quishing,” a growing type of scam. Stickers bearing fake QR codes are plastered on ticket machines or street signs to trick people into visiting malicious websites to pay for parking, where they inadvertently reveal sensitive information such as their card details.

TBIJ sent freedom of information requests to every council and hospital trust in the UK to gauge the prevalence of the issue. Of the 373 local authorities that responded, 123 said they had received reports of their car parks being targeted in the past year.

Read more here

Was HSBC ever serious about sustainability?

It feels like a long time ago that HSBC began cultivating its image as a climate-conscious bank. Back in 2021, it enlisted the comic actor Richard Ayoade to star in adverts trumpeting the bank’s green credentials, telling us that “climate change doesn’t do borders”. The same year, HSBC had signed up to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) and pledged to provide up to $1 trillion to help the net-zero transition. HSBC was, the message went, committed to saving the planet.

But it’s all been downhill from there. Behind closed doors, HSBC was making deals that undermined its bold public pledges. The final shoe dropped the other day. It announced its decision to quit the NZBA altogether, becoming the first British bank to do so.

HSBC said it will remain engaged with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, an umbrella group, to support the transition, and will continue to set targets informed by the latest scientific evidence.

Now, regular readers of Uncovered will know that we’ve been reporting on HSBC’s greenwashing for quite a while now. We’ve burrowed into all its corporate books and exposed the coal and oil deals that make its green pledges seem whimsical. Our revelations have prompted shareholders and customers to complain to the HSBC leadership.

The politics is such now that ditching climate commitments is completely acceptable. That said, many customers and shareholders are putting up a good fight.

But our Environment Editor Rob Soutar decided it was a good time to ask: Was HSBC ever serious about its green commitments? He dug out all the clues about what HSBC was really thinking all along.

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