The metamorphosis from the Centre for Separated Families through Separated Families (Europe) Ltd to the Family Separation Clinic.

The couple set up Separated Families Europe, it would appear in order to divert income from the Centre for Separated Families.

The Centre for Separated Families officially relinquished its “pokey first floor office” at 3 Barker Lane in x in order to save money, and its registered address moved to a residential address in the countryside. However, in reality, Karen and Nick Woodall had moved to London.

On x they incorporated Separated Families Europe.

They moved into a luxury rented apartment at Burrells Wharf.

In 2015 Karen Woodall was sanctioned by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.

This section on parental alienation is not directly relevant to child maintenance.

Here, as the author of this website, I declare that I have not had any dealings with the family courts, nor have I or anyone I know had any dealings with Karen or Nick Woodall, Christine Skinner, Samantha Callan, or any other named individuals.

The financial aspect of the Woodalls’ ongoing business remains relevant because they would appear to have significant income which they still fail to declare to Companies House and, logic and past behaviour would indicate, fail to declare to HM Revenue & Customs. On one counselling website Nick Woodall claims he began working for the Family Separation Clinic in 2010. The couple eventually incorporated the Family Separation Clinic as a company in its own right on 5 June 2014, and have filed accounts for a dormant company ever since. On 15 March 2019 they submitted accounts for a dormant company up to 30 June 2018.

On 6 April 2018 Karen Woodall boasted on her blog: “I have probably worked with around 300 hundred families directly in my time”. On a youtube video of a conference in the United States, Karen Woodall tells delegates that she charges around £8,000 for reunification work. At a rough estimate, the couple may have earned around £2,400,000 for their direct work with families. On top of this will be the money they have earned from counselling parents in other countries via Skype at £70 per hour, parental alienation retreats they have held abroad, and their many training courses.

Additionally, the couple may well have assets which could be used to pay some or all of the debt to HMRC. Although they appear to rent rather than own their luxury Docklands apartment, on 27 December 2016 Karen Woodall referred in her blog to “our Cornish retreat”, which they go to every winter to recuperate from all their hard work. This indicates that they own a holiday home in Cornwall.

“The days between Christmas and my return to work are usually spent with family and then together with my husband Nick at our Cornish retreat, a place which I treasure because of the healing it brings.  Working as we do, on many different projects at once,  the hours are long and we are often miles apart as we both travel a lot in our work. When it comes to the winter break, which is the only time we close our work down properly each year, it is a much needed period of reflection and review.”

Furthermore, the appearance of ongoing fraud today lends further weight to any potential criminal trial.

On 16 March 2016 she claimed to be working with around 45 families a year.

But there is another, perhaps even more serious aspect to this.

Karen and Nick Woodall are unprincipled fraudsters. They appear willing to do anything for money. I have carefully read thousands of pages of Karen Woodall’s blog and - though I am not a psychiatrist - am convinced that she is an extremely intelligent and compelling narcissist who is unable to honestly reflect on her own behaviour and prejudices.

In 2015 she was sanctioned by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy following a complaint made against her in 2012. BACP found that she “lacked moral integrity and professionalism”. She was required to undergo some sanctions, which she very begrudgingly complied with. But - rather terrifyingly - she wrote on her blog, still furious and full of self pity, that her standard practice was to make diagnoses of parental alienation without always seeking the child, and that BACP was in the wrong for finding against her for this.

Parental alienation is a much hotter topic in the United States than in the UK. Several American writers have raised the alarm at the potential for parental alienation to be used as a weapon by abusive men to switch allegations of domestic violence or child abuse directly back onto women. In some states, lawyers apparently advise women not to make abuse allegations because these are routinely directed right back at them as accusations of parental alienation. And it is happening in the UK, too. In 2018 the charity, Surviving Economic Abuse, submitted written evidence to the Home Affairs Committee domestic abuse inquiry:

“Many women see their perpetrator sanctioned by the criminal courts only then to find that this is not considered within family court proceedings. Indeed, the family courts are often used as an arena for control by the abuser through initiating lengthy and costly proceedings. Gendered imbalances in power and resources also negatively impact the outcome of family court cases due to cultures of disbelief. This means that women are often advised by their own solicitors not to raise the issues of domestic abuse or finances within family court cases since this would lead the court to perceive them as liars and ‘gold-diggers’.”

Karen Woodall boasts on her blog of the numbers of “reunifications” she achieves between alienated parents and their children. Where children persistently refuse to spend time with the non-resident parent, even after a court order, she frequently convinces the judge to order a “transfer of residence”, meaning that the child is obliged to live with the alienated parent.

This is fantastic news if we assume that all of those children were alienated from their non-resident parent by an emotionally abusive or mentally unwell resident parent. But what if some of those children have refused to spend time with their non-resident parent because they have genuine cause to be afraid? American writers have reported on cases where this has happened - indeed, one of Karen Woodall’s closest American allies, William Bernet, is named in one Slate article. Karen Woodall boasts on her blog, chillingly, that children have been known to call the police as she tries to remove them, and that once the police see she has a court order, they assist her with the removal.

This is yet another reason why I have produced this website. The fraud committed by Karen and Nick Woodall must be investigated so that all family law cases in which they have been involved can be re-examined. I do not suggest that all the cases will be wrong. I do believe that parental alienation probably exists but is rare. But I insist that these individuals are very dangerous people to be engaged in work that could result in children being forced to live with an abusive parent.

On 29 November 2015 Karen Woodall blogged:

“This week I was on a late night panel (late for me anyway) via Skype to Toronto University Students for the Canadian Association for Equality. The subject was disappearing dads and parental alienation.”

She was referring to an event called “Disappearing Dads: How Children Suffer When We Demonize Fathers”. The Canadian Association for Equality is a men’s rights group. Using the word “equality” is a common rhetorical device for men’s rights activists, because they believe that social and economic gains made by women over the past fifty years have rendered men unequal and oppressed, and because it conceals their real agenda, which is to reassert the male domination which they feel they have lost and which should be the natural order. The video footage of the event is on youtube. The question and answer session begins at 01:09.04.

One of the other members of the panel was Sol Goldstein, an American parental alienation expert.

RateMDs is a doctor rating website with anonymous ratings. Sol Goldstein receives overwhelmingly negative ratings. Bad ratings from mothers who lost custody of their children are understandable, but, particularly worryingly, he has several reviews from children who have now grown up, who accuse him of causing them to suffer ongoing abuse by misdiagnosing parental alienation, including the following:

“I was one of the children Dr. Goldstein used to further his career and prove his idea of parental alienation. I don't disagree that parents try to alienate their children from each other, that isn't my complaint. My issue us that as a child, Dr. Goldstein had no intention of doing any sort of actual assessment and when he did ask questions and I would answer he would say I didn't know what I felt or that I wasn't being truthful. His report was instrumental in the custody arrangement that allowed myself and my siblings to continue to be abused by our father and stepmother. Abuse that he was aware of and chose to ignore and deny.”

“Dr Goldstein was instrumental in emotionally damaging my siblings and I, causing unnecessary turmoil, ruining the remainder of my childhood and allowing someone who was abusing us to continue to have shared custody (and yes he was claiming parental alienation and was also paying the bills). I was 10 I didn't need anyone to try to alienate me from my father he did that on his own by being physically and verbally/emotionally abusive. Dr Goldstein continuously told me I was lying and ill mannered if I got upset that no one would listen that we were being abused and seriously fucked me up. Talk about not being able to trust someone who you think is there to help you. I learned early on no one cared what happened to me. That takes a long time to repair.”

“I saw Dr. Goldstein approx. 15 years ago during my parents divorce case as did my two younger siblings. It was apparent that he was completely biased and did not have any intention of listening to what I actually had to say. He came into the meetings with an agenda and opinions of "parental alienation" which I understand is his specialty. He was not supportive or empathetic and was a horrible psychiatrist. I would not recommend to anyone, ever.”

The American website, “Family Access - Fighting For Children’s Rights” gives Karen Woodall’s advice on how to find a good parental alienation specialist. It follows that investigators could demand details of all the cases in which she and her husband have been involved during the past several years:

QUESTIONS TO ASK THE EXPERTS 
By: Karen Goodall [sic]
​
Here are some questions designed to ask the experts. These are questions to ask anyone who tells you that they work with Parental Alienation. 

1. How many children have you been successful in reuniting with their parents in the past five years? 

2. How many times have you been cross examined in a case concerning parental alienation in the past five years? 

3. Can you provide citation references to the case you have worked in, how many of those cases are published cases? 

1. What is the single most important element to address in helping any parent to deal with parental alienation in the court process? 

2. When would you consider therapy may be possible in a case of alienation? 

3. What differentiation protocols do you use to help you to decide how to treat alienation? 

4. What route would you take to reuniting a child with a parent after five years of rejecting behavior in the child? 

5. Which other professionals would you regard as essential in treating a case of Parental Alienation? 

6. Who can I speak to who you have helped in the past five years? 

7. How much will you charge me to do this work and what guarantee will you give me that it will be money well spent?