Some time ago, a friend attended a wedding at which his table was monopolised by a group of family lawyers who regaled one another with stories of their heroic exploits. The best reaction was for the female barrister who boasted how, the previous week, she'd secured a barring order against a 70-year-old man with Parkinson's. That brought the house down. I was thinking about this when reading recent reportage of modifications of the in-camera rule.
The Minister for Justice has announced that henceforth family law cases, while remaining closed to the media, may be attended by certain named categories of "interested parties": family law researchers, mediators and persons nominated by the Courts Service to compile reports. Media reporting of this exercise in window dressing has exhibited a uniform lack of appropriate outrage. There has, admittedly, been palpable media disgruntlement because journalists are excluded from the list of privileged categories. Offence has been taken at what is interpreted as a snub, but beyond that no show of disquiet. The general sense is of one branch of the establishment acting a bit piqued because another has left it out of the loop.
I have been especially struck by two things: (1) the continuing refusal of many journalists to straightforwardly acknowledge what the dogs in the street know about family courts; and (2) the way journalists appear to take at face value the key assumptions of the vested interests.
The reporting has, in general, been characterised by mealy-mouthedness and weasel words. We are told that certain things are "alleged" about family courts, but one infers that these allegations cannot be regarded as reliable. Anecdotes, it is said, "abound" of "apparent" miscarriages of justice, bias and caprice. In some instances, it is as though the journalists welcome the "opening up" of family courts so as to put an end to these dubious rumours.
Journalists report all the time what people say has happened, how people respond, how one account tallies with another. But in this context, uniquely, it seems that what people say about their experiences is not to be trusted. In general, the media seem to accept that, notwithstanding the overwhelming uniformity of accounts of family courts, judgment must be suspended in the absence of judicial proof. And the Catch 22 is that such proof is rendered impossible by the in camera rule.
The legal profession asserts - unchallenged by most journalism - that this rule exists to protect families. Well, I once sought a court injunction to prevent voyeuristic media coverage of matters concerning my own family. Having spent in excess of £20,000 procuring what I imagined was the requisite court order, I noted with alarm that the coverage seemed to increase from the moment it was issued. My lawyers patiently explained that, since the order had been issued in a family court, it would be contempt of court to tell anyone of its existence. In what sense do such absurdities protect Irish families? The in camera rule, whatever its original purpose, has now one function only: to conceal from public scrutiny the corruption of the family law system, which dispenses injustice and misery in equal measure and makes lawyers rich. Family courts are the Letterfracks of our time, a GUBU of the heart and soul of this nation, a running sore on Irish democracy and a nightmare of pain and damage being shunted into the future.
The media has been derelict in pursuing this corruption, for three reasons: 1. The hurts being inflicted in family courts are largely a consequence of divorce, which most journalists approve of. 2. Because men are almost invariably the victims in the here-and-now (effects on children will manifest mainly in the future), exposure of this corruption would run counter to the ideological cast of most media. Reporting of recent developments has reflected also a desire to deny this bias. 3. Many journalists have entanglements with lawyers, and so are blind to the evils of which these ostensibly respectable men and women are individually and collectively guilty.
Family law could not function once flushed out into open court, because the public, unable to believe its eyes and ears, would take to the streets until this perversion of justice was brought to an end. Family law would then be obliged, like criminal or civil law, to make an approximate kind of sense, thus derailing the lawyers' gravy train.
Permitting only representatives of vested interests to report what happens in family courts is to offer a satire in the guise of reform. Why, after all, should these individuals be any less corrupt than those who work the system? But to call it a "missed opportunity" is to take for granted the bona fides of those responsible.
This is a cynical strategy to deflate growing public unease. Aided by the lamentable media response, it will create a temporary reassurance and distraction but change nothing fundamental.
We should, of course, remember that the Minister for Justice is a lawyer. I rest my case.