LegallyNik

LegallyNik Trauma Informed Child Protection Lawyer 👩🏻‍💼
Independent Mama of ✌️
Showing Law & Life ❤️
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15/09/2026

Sound familiar?

Post-separation assaults is not one dramatic incident.

Its surveillance. Fake accounts. Recruiting a new partner to monitor an ex. Repeated unwanted messages. Threats. Threats and more threats. Financial control. Withholding child maintenance. Disappearing from the children’s lives and then reappearing without acknowledging the emotional impact of that absence. Using the children to communicate adult messages, provoke a reaction or destabilise the other parent.

And individually, each behaviour can be minimised.

“They’re just checking social media.”
“They’re struggling financially.”
“They miss their children.”
“They had a difficult childhood.”
“They’re hurt too.”

But safeguarding requires us to look at patterns, not excuses.

Your trauma may explain some of your behaviour. It does not give you permission to inflict trauma on somebody else.

And separation doesn’t necessarily make these behaviours stop, it often simply changes form.

That is what post-separation assaults can look like.

The most frustrating thing, is that the law is not quick to support or save you…. It can take timing and the right support, otherwise it’s a up hill battle to boundary, parallel in parenting and pull back all communication.

11/09/2026

Addiction in the Family Court is one of the areas I find most frustrating.

How something so psychologically and medically significant can be dismissed by one or two reduced or clear tests, despite a prolonged history of substance misuse, genuinely baffles me.

Addiction and relapse are complex. A negative test at one point in time does not necessarily erase years of history or the safeguarding concerns that come with it.

But as lawyers, we have to work within the legal framework we have and build in protection wherever we can.

If there is a significant history in one of my cases, one safeguard I will consider asking the court to include is a direction that if the parent appears intoxicated, contact does not go ahead.

It gives the safe parent some ability to respond to what is actually presenting in front of them rather than feeling compelled to hand a child over regardless.

There are also circumstances where testing can be requested before contact takes place. That can be harder to secure, but it is absolutely something I have seen used.

The difficulty with addiction is that safeguarding cannot simply be about whether someone can produce a clear test on a particular day.

History. Patterns. Relapse. Behaviour. Risk. They all matter when we are talking about the safety of a child.

10/09/2026

Anyone living life in an oxymoron state?

I did my university dissertation on Sarah’s Law and its US equivalent, Megan’s Law.I received a First for that work, pro...
08/09/2026

I did my university dissertation on Sarah’s Law and its US equivalent, Megan’s Law.

I received a First for that work, probably because I was utterly invested in it. Looking back, it was my first real window into child protection, so it’s a full circle to be highlighting this law here.

Sarah Payne was just 8 years old when she was abducted and unalived (sorry for the use of that word, meta restricts posts for alternatives) in 2000 by a man who had a previous conviction for abducting and indecently hurting another young girl. Her parents subsequently campaigned for greater access to information that could help parents protect their children. I remember this case vividly in 2000. I was 16 and horrified at what these parents had experienced. What young Sarah had endured and the dangers that were around her.

Sarah’s Law allows you to ask the police whether a specific person who has contact with a specific child has convictions for child sxual offences or poses a known risk for another reason.

You don’t have to be the child’s parent to make a request. A grandparent, neighbour, friend or other concerned person can apply.

The police carry out checks and assess the risk. If there is information that should be disclosed to safeguard the child, it will be given to the person best placed to protect them, which may not necessarily be the person who made the application.

And it’s important to remember, Sarah’s Law isn’t just about new partners. It can concern a relative, family friend, someone within another parent’s household or another person who has access to your child.

It’s a safeguarding tool that far more parents should know exists.

Save this post. Share it. Talk about it. It could protect a child.

07/09/2026

By the time child protection becomes involved, something has often already gone very wrong.

I worked on several cases involving mothers experiencing postpartum psychosis, and I want to challenge the assumption that social workers simply arrive to remove babies.

That was never and could never be the starting point.

Where it was safe and possible, we worked incredibly hard to keep mother and baby together whilst Mum received the treatment and support she needed.

But there was a frustration I saw repeatedly and that was women seemingly needing to deteriorate to the point of crisis before the level of mental health intervention matched the seriousness of what was happening.

And once there is an imminent risk to a mother or her child, safeguarding services HAVE to respond.

That can mean more professionals, more assessments, more fear and more pressure being placed on a woman who is already profoundly unwell.

The Lindsay Clancy case has made me think a lot about those cases.

We need to get better at recognising serious postpartum mental illness BEFORE crisis becomes catastrophe.

Early intervention isn’t just mental health care, It’s safeguarding too.

HUNG JURY. MISTRIAL.After seven days of deliberations and the most dramatic of conclusions today, the jury in the Lindsa...
04/09/2026

HUNG JURY. MISTRIAL.

After seven days of deliberations and the most dramatic of conclusions today, the jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial has been unable to reach a unanimous verdict and Judge Sullivan has officially announced a mistrial!

A mistrial is not a guilty verdict.
It is also not an acquittal.

It means this jury could not unanimously agree on the outcome, and therefore no verdict has been reached, which is needed in the state of Massachusetts

So what happens now?

The case does not simply disappear. The prosecution will now have to decide what comes next, including whether Lindsay Clancy will face another trial before a new jury. Could a new jury ever be impartial following so much coverage?
Equally this puts the prosecution at a slight advantage as they know exactly how the defence will fight having been through the trial once already.

For me, one of the most significant things to come from these deliberations is just how difficult this case has been for 12 people tasked with answering the ultimate question of criminal responsibility.

We have heard evidence about postpartum mental illness, psychosis, medication, sleep deprivation and Lindsay’s state of mind, with experts themselves reaching profoundly different conclusions.

And Lindsay’s case has opened a conversation about maternal mental health, postpartum psychosis and what happens when a mother is desperately unwell that I don’t think is going away anytime soon.

Defence attorney Kevin Reddington has fought for his client, whether you agree with his case or not, tooth and absolute nail, right to the very end.

Whatever your view of Lindsay Clancy, you cannot say she wasn’t defended.

04/09/2026

A little reminder from when I went on the last year 🤍

To think I’ve actually gone through a number of other moments since then that I’ve needed to ride the wave of, allow to become lessons, and somehow grow through.

There was a time I really disliked who I had become as a result of what I had experienced.

The rumination exhausted me.
The inability to focus completely on my work, my children, or anything outside of what I was experiencing frustrated me. I just wanted to feel like me again.

Until, slowly, I allowed the growth to make room for change.

I started to understand that your trauma can be both the marking and the making of you.

Days are not perfect. Life is still complex. Some days are still a struggle. But I now know nothing is permanent. Everything passes.

And what is left are new markings of you. Some you would never have chosen. Some that changed you forever.
And some that, eventually, you realise helped make you who you are x

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