Joanna Lucas

Children – Private

Joanna regularly acts for parents in disputes concerning the following:

• Child Arrangement Orders (residence and contact)
• Specific Issue
• Prohibited Steps
• Removal from the jurisdiction
• Fact Finding hearings
• Considerable experience of complex cases involving allegations of sexual abuse of children, rape within parental relationships, serious domestic violence, coercive control and gaslighting
• During the recent lockdown, Joanna has advised and represented several clients in relation to disruption to their child arrangements

Domestic Violence and Injunctions

Non-molestation and occupation injunctions, and related proceedings, including transfer of tenancies.

Children – Public

Joanna has extensive experience in all aspects of public law cases concerning children. She regularly appears at all levels in the Family Court and has conducted cases in the Court of Appeal. Her areas of experience include:

• EPO/ICO applications for Local Authority, Parents and Guardian
• Fact Finding Hearings – Domestic Violence and Non-Accidental Injuries
• S.38(6) applications
• Placement
• Special Guardianship
• Adults with Learning Disabilities requiring the Official Solicitor
• Fabricated Illness
• Sexual Abuse
• Neglect

Notable Cases:

• Re L – private law proceedings representing father in which mother had made numerous allegations of sexual abuse against him in respect of their six-year-old daughter. The allegations were all successfully refuted at a fact finding hearing, and following an assessment by a child and adolescent psychiatrist in respect of parental alienation, a residence order was secured in respect of father;
• Re F – private law proceedings in the High Court, representing a father who had been convicted of murdering his wife’s lover, and sought contact;
• Re A – private law proceedings, representing a mother who made numerous allegations of serious sexual assault and rape against the father, who appeared in person. All findings sought were made by the court at fact finding, and the father’s application for direct contact was dismissed;
• Re B – private law proceedings, representing a mother who had been found to have inflicted fractures on the child, in earlier care proceedings. Successfully secured an order for shared care;
• Re D – care proceedings representing a father where there were numerous allegations of sexual abuse in respect of seven children;
• Re B – care proceedings representing a mother who had been found in earlier proceedings to be the perpetrator of extensive sexual abuse;
• Re M – care proceedings representing a father where there were extensive allegations of mother fabricating and inducing illness in the subject child. This case involved careful cross examination of a paediatrician, psychiatrist and psychologist. The case concluded with father securing a residence order;
• Re H – care proceedings representing the Local Authority where the care plan was to separate young siblings, and place one for adoption, leaving the other with the maternal grandmother, when both had been placed together with the grandmother for several months. Protracted evidence from two independent social workers;
• Re D – acted for local authority in final care proceedings, where a parent invited the national press. Subsequent injunction sought restricting publication, followed by high court proceedings concerning the extent of the restriction;
• Re H – care proceedings in the High Court acting for the local authority who sought to place the child with extended family in Pakistan.

Reported Cases:

• Re P and P [2009] 2 FLR 1370 Appeared as junior counsel for an Intervener in a successful appeal from the High Court, who had declined leave to instruct a paediatric pathologist to report on the circumstances of the death of a young baby.