n the afternoon that Sarah's daughters were taken away from her, they had been due to go to a paddling-pool party. It was July 2020 and, with the easing of lockdown restrictions in England, the girls – then nine and six – were excited about seeing their friends again after months apart. Sarah had just bought them matching swimsuits: blue with sequin unicorns.

But the girls never made it to the party. Three days before, Sarah had received a call from her solicitor. "I could not comprehend what I was hearing," she says. "My legs started shaking." Her solicitor explained that she had been called a "narcissist" in evidence presented to the family court, which claimed she was an immediate danger to herself and her children. Both of her girls could be removed from her with immediate effect.

"I kept saying to him: 'It makes no sense.'" Sarah had committed no crime. Her children's social workers, teachers and other professionals with whom they were in contact had seen no problem with her parenting. The girls had spent lockdown with their mother "doing maths and fishing for tadpoles. They were safe and happy."

The person who had "diagnosed" Sarah was an unregulated psychologist, Melanie Gill, whom at one point the judge wrongly referred to as "Dr", although she had never attained any qualifications that merit that title. Gill has a third-class degree in psychology and a diploma in child forensic studies, which she was awarded instead of a master's degree because she did not finish her dissertation.

Sarah attended an urgent court hearing via a video call on the morning of the party. It lasted 50 minutes. On the basis of Gill's evidence, the judge told her that her daughters would have to live with their father and that she had two hours to get them ready to leave. Instead of the paddling pool that afternoon, she told them they would be going on a "two-week holiday with Daddy".

When their father arrived, the children refused to go with him. "The girls were clinging to me and had to be dragged off kicking and screaming. All the neighbours came out to see what was happening.

"And just like that, I lost my girls."

That was more than six years ago. Apart from two brief occasions, Sarah has not seen her daughters unsupervised since. Most of the contact has happened fortnightly in public places such as hotel lounges. She has missed birthdays, first boyfriends and academic achievements. She wasn't consulted when it came to choosing secondary schools or GCSE options. No one told her when one of her daughters received hospital treatment. "I've effectively been stripped of all parental responsibility," she says.

Fighting this has cost her £85,000 in legal bills. Her share of the cost of supervised contact with her daughters has reached £13,000. She is close to bankruptcy. And still she is asking how one unregulated court expert using a theory that official guidance in England and Wales now says is a "harmful pseudo-science" could wield so much power over her life.

arah was a teenager when she and her ex got together. "He was the first person I'd ever loved," she says. They were happy at first, but Sarah says he was controlling and prone to angry outbursts. "It was my first sexual relationship and I didn't understand it was wrong."

By 2018, the couple's marital disputes had escalated. The police had been called to their address several times and Sarah was becoming increasingly depressed. After she took an accidental overdose and was admitted to hospital, a referral was made to social services, who recorded that the children had witnessed domestic abuse and were showing signs of anxiety.

"He was furious with me that social services were involved," she says. While they were still living together, Sarah's ex made an application to the family court to try to stop her from taking the children.

She says that the abuse escalated and she fled the family home with her daughters under police escort. Sarah had reported the allegations of abuse against him and later secured a non-molestation order (a type of protective order) from the family court. In response, Sarah's ex claimed that she had tried to kill herself (which she denies, supported by hospital records) and that she was "alienating" the children from him. In one statement, he wrote: "I'm being prevented from seeing them even though I'm a hands-on dad."

In July 2018, a district judge in the family court made limited findings against both parents. They included that Sarah had slapped her ex, thrown things at him, shouted and sworn at him and sent him abusive texts. The judge accepted, too, that her ex had been "nasty" and "intimidating" and had "inadvertently" trapped Sarah's arm in a door. A court order was made for the children to share their time equally between the parents.

A few months later, however, the girls appeared to be struggling. Sarah's elder daughter told her GP that her father had smacked her on the bottom and she complained of recurring abdominal pains. Court papers state that the elder daughter later told teachers, social workers and her GP that she and her sister were sent outside by their father in the "cold and dark" and that they took shelter in a wendy house for a while before sneaking back inside.

The next day, according to court papers, the younger daughter recorded a video while hiding under her bed covers. In the audio, her sister and her father could be heard arguing. The elder daughter later reported to her teacher and GP that, during the row, her father had thrown her around, causing her to hit her head and chest, leaving a bruise. The children's school contacted social services. The girls refused to see their father for eight weeks.

Sarah, meanwhile, made an application to change the shared care order and the girls' contact with their father was suspended by the court. In April 2019, a social worker fed back to the court that the children were sometimes "scared when with their father".

Her ex responded by applying for sole custody. He claimed Sarah had been influencing the girls to express negative views about him and that his elder daughter was lying. The court requested that the local authority prepare an independent report. The social worker who wrote the report recommended the children live with their mother and see their father regularly, including on alternate weekends. The social worker said she saw nothing to suggest the girls were being influenced by their mother. She wrote of Sarah's elder daughter: "This is not the behaviour of a child who has been influenced by a parent."

Sarah's ex objected to the report and said he wanted a second opinion from a psychologist. The judge agreed, saying that the social worker had not been trained in "parental alienation" since 2010. Since that time, he said, things had "significantly moved on".

They certainly had. Parental alienation syndrome was a concept created in 1985 by the New York psychiatrist Richard Gardner. It was based on the theory that a parent can brainwash a child to turn them against the other parent, leading the child to wrongly believe they are being abused. The theory was widely rejected for lacking scientific credibility and by the mid-1990s had begun to fall out of use.

By the 2000s, however, it had resurfaced and the idea of "parental alienation" gained traction as a litigation tactic in the family courts – to much concern. In April 2023, a UN report called parental alienation a "pseudo-concept" weaponised by abusers to discredit abuse claims. The NSPCC has also issued warnings about the concept, while the UK government has said it "does not recognise 'parental alienation syndrome' as a diagnosable condition".

Gill is one of the fiercest proponents of "parental alienation". By her own estimate, she has given evidence in family courts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland "probably 150 to 200 times" over the past 15 years. During that time, she has given evidence that has been pivotal in the removal of at least a dozen children from their mothers, according to an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). This includes cases where fathers had been found by the court to be coercive and controlling or to have engaged in domestic abuse. It was Gill whom Sarah's ex asked for a second opinion.

Sarah had her concerns: "I had seen something that connected her to a fathers' rights group. My instincts were that there could be some kind of bias." She wasn't aware at the time that Gill wasn't registered with any regulatory body. "Of course, I would have objected on those grounds had I known." Instead, she says her lawyers told her it would serve her case to be amenable. "I was given the impression the judge didn't like me and I should not complain," Sarah says. "Not for one second did I imagine how badly it could go."

Expert witness psychologists can hold significant power and influence in the family courts in England and Wales. They are duty-bound to act impartially and, since the rules were tightened by law in July, should be registered with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council. However, before July, judges could appoint whomever they wished. Gill, who describes herself as "an attachment specialist, psychologist and forensic consultant" working "exclusively as an expert witness", was appointed in September 2019 to make an assessment of Sarah's family and was paid £10,688 to do so.

Her views have troubled others working in the field. Dr Jaime Craig, a consultant clinical psychologist and the chair of the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK, believes Gill has an assessment process that assumes "there's no such thing as domestic abuse". Gill rejects mainstream clinical psychology and has described her own approach using "attachment science" as being able to "get to the truth of what happened in the past".

Gill did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson previously told TBIJ that she was well qualified to perform the role of expert witness and had years of specialist training.

In a 2023 case, she told a court: "I have been challenged and questioned on my qualifications in every single private law case I have ever undertaken and I have never been criticised." Gill claims to be the victim of a "witch-hunt" and her supporters say she has been unfairly hounded by the media and "radical feminists".

Sarah says her assessment process with Gill was "confusing and difficult". "She asked whether I'd ever experienced abuse, so I opened up about some of my father's behaviours towards me – and my ex-husband's," she says.

Sarah has fond memories of her father from when she was a young child. While he later became abusive, her mother was always a protective figure. "Despite being subjected to abuse from my father at times, my mother was always a safe, steady, wholesome presence. I told Gill this, but she claimed I was neglected, which I was not in any sense."

Gill concluded that Sarah's "narcissism could make her prone to vengeful anger" and went on to recommend "schema therapy", which is commonly used to treat personality disorders, despite Sarah having never been diagnosed with one. Gill also said there was extensive evidence the children were being alienated from their father by Sarah. There was no mention in Gill's report of the 2018 court findings of abuse, or the elder child's specific allegations against her father.

Gill recommended that, in order to safeguard the girls, they should live with their father and receive therapy. After this, Sarah did not see her children for four and a half months.

s family court proceedings are held in private and speaking about them could be in contempt of court, Sarah was not even allowed to explain to close friends why her children were no longer with her. She was, she says, "effectively gagged".

Sarah is keen to point out that although there were periods where her children refused to see their dad, they always wanted a relationship with him. "They were not alienated; they just didn't want to live with him," she says. "I have now become the victim of precisely what I was accused of."

In August 2020, the decision that the children should live with their father was made permanent at a review hearing. Gill wrote a second report and told the court that the children's attachment to their mother resulted in them "presenting negative information to her and others to align themselves with her views".

She said the social worker, the GP, the school and other professionals to whom the children had made negative reports about their father would not have seen these "attachment issues" as "they cannot be identified just by looking at what is happening on the surface".

She said Sarah's contact should not progress to unsupervised until she had undertaken schema therapy, which is not widely available on the NHS, costs anywhere from £80 to £200 an hour for private treatment and can take "up to two years".

Giving evidence, the social worker tasked with writing an independent safeguarding report said, despite Gill's recommendations, there was "insufficient evidence" to "deny the children contact" with their mother. But the judge found the social worker's evidence was lacking in the area of "attachment issues". By contrast, he found Gill's evidence to be "compelling" and said the picture she painted of the mother fitted "entirely" with his view of her.

In her own evidence, Sarah said Gill's recommendations had gone against the view of all the other professionals who had dealt with the family. She said she did not agree schema therapy was appropriate for her, as she had not been diagnosed with a personality disorder.

She questioned Gill's expert status and mentioned her links to a fathers' rights group. The judge said these criticisms "smack[ed] of desperation" and that Gill's CV was "impressive". Sarah's evidence, he said, was seeking to "portray herself entirely the victim". Meanwhile, he described the father as "willing to learn" and "wholly child-focused".

Sarah's ex did not reply to requests for comment. Previously, he rebutted all the allegations made against him and said that he cooperated throughout court proceedings at a "considerable personal, emotional and financial cost, and with the children's welfare and best interests at the forefront of my mind and decision-making".

In court, the judge acknowledged that removing the children from their mother was a "draconian step" taken with "some considerable misgivings". But he added: "The decision was … based entirely on the expert recommendation and nothing is before the court today to suggest that decision was wrong."

arah's face lights up when she talks about her daughters. She describes them as sweet, funny, kind little girls – even though her elder is now taller than she is. During previous supervised visits, they talked fondly of school friends Sarah has never met.

The elder is creative and crochets toys and bags. When they still lived together, she would ask Sarah to choose her clothes, but now she is finding her own style. "She's enjoying cutting up her T-shirts and being an individual," she says. Her younger sister, meanwhile, loves Taylor Swift and the colour pink.

After the children were taken away, Sarah clung on to the home she had occupied with her daughters after leaving her marriage. "It had been a sanctuary for us," she says. "If they came back, I wanted it to be familiar."

When she got home after her daughters were taken away, it felt as if they had died, she says. They had left in a hurry and their toys were exactly as they had left them. "That's where they stayed for years," she says, describing the lounge littered with Lego constructions and collections of feathers, shells and pebbles. In the sisters' bedroom, Sylvanian Family characters were set up as part of a classroom scene. A cupboard had been converted into a doll's house. One day, Sarah opened it to find a miniature dolly tucked up in bed.

The contact she has had with her children feels far from home. It takes place under the eye of a supervisor, who writes down everything that is said. The contact notes are kept and could later be produced as evidence if required by the court. "The implicit message is that I'm a danger," says Sarah. "We can't even go to the toilets without the supervisor."

On one such loo trip, her elder took the opportunity to whisper that she had started her period. "She clearly didn't want her sister to hear, so all I could do in response was to give her a hug," says Sarah. "She was deprived of the intimacy of that mother-daughter moment. So I went home and wrote her a letter telling her about my own experiences."

In the end, Sarah did not send the letter. She did not want the details of her own first period to be read by the court and her ex, as every card, gift or piece of correspondence had to go through him for approval. Later, she was upset to learn that her daughters were self-harming.

There may now be hope for Sarah. In December 2024, the Family Justice Council (FJC), an advisory body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, published official guidance that said court-appointed experts should be regulated and should not be asked to look for "parental alienation", which cannot be diagnosed and which the FJC considers "harmful pseudo-science". Instead, judges should identify any "alienating behaviours" as factual matters, but only after ruling out domestic abuse.

Then, in a high court ruling in July 2025, a senior judge acknowledged that there were "concerns" about Gill and ruled that the findings in Sarah's case, based on Gill's evidence, lacked a "solid foundation". The judge added that "what the [district] judge expressed to be findings based on Ms Gill's assessment should not stand as such in any further assessment" and that Gill's use of "attachment science … makes it very difficult to retain any of what she says as a base for future decision-making". The judge said there should be "an investigation about the current situation so as to inform … what sort of relationship … the children can have with their mother in the light of their own best interests, wishes and feelings".

It was a watershed moment, not only for Sarah, but also for other mothers who believe their children have been unjustly removed on the advice of Gill. A transparency order issued by the family court means Sarah can finally talk publicly – albeit under a pseudonym – about her ordeal for the first time.

Since Sarah's successful legal challenge, another mother has been vindicated after getting Gill's evidence overturned on similar grounds. In February, the then president of the family division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, issued "firm guidance" around court experts that said courts should no longer use unregulated experts. On 20 July, rules barring unregulated psychologists such as Gill from family courts in England and Wales (unless in exceptional circumstances) came into force.

However, for families such as Sarah's, the damage has already been done.

Sarah hopes her years of "living in limbo" may soon come to an end. But despite having Gill's evidence overturned, it has not proved so simple. She should now be allowed to return to a full relationship with her daughters. However, her girls have said they want the supported contact to continue. Sarah fears that therapy provided to the girls on Gill's recommendation has reinforced the notion that she is a danger to them.

"Their trust in me appears to have been destroyed by whatever they have been told in line with the Gill narrative," says Sarah. She has seen disclosures from the girls' schools showing that they were told she was "mentally unwell" and "high risk".

At a hearing in April, an officer from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, who had assessed the girls, told the court he supported their request for continued supervised contact, even though there were no safeguarding concerns. He confirmed that they had not been told the truth about why they were removed, nor that their removal from Sarah was based on flawed expert evidence, since overturned by the high court.

Sarah's barrister challenged his report and successfully argued that a new properly trained and regulated psychologist should be brought in to deal with the complex and delicate situation. "They need to know the truth, because their perception of me is based on a lie," says Sarah. "For all intents and purposes, my motherhood ended the day their father took them away. I will never get back the lost time with my daughters.

"Of course, I've been at rock bottom," Sarah continues. "There have been times when I knew if I spoke out I'd be further punished – maybe lose them completely … But I wasn't going to let this be a self-fulfilling prophecy; I didn't want to give any credence to Gill's theories.

"All I want now is a chance of a future as a family, rather than the strangers we've become."

Sarah is a pseudonym