The Legal Hurdle – When Justice Feels Out of Reach
The Legal Hurdle – When Justice Feels Out of Reach
What do you do when the very system designed to protect you becomes the very thing that fails you? What happens when, after surviving the unthinkable — domestic abuse — you are met not with protection, but punishment?
This is the question I’ve had to live through. And it’s the reason I filed a judicial review.
I am a domestic abuse survivor. I am also the legal owner of my home — the one I bought, paid for, and built a life in. And yet, through a series of court decisions lacking in safeguarding and sensitivity, I was evicted from that home and forced onto the streets. The very man I had escaped was given the power to sell the property, even though he had no legal claim to it.
I was not protected. I was punished.
But I did not stop. I filed a judicial review — as a litigant in person. No lawyer. No firm behind me. Just documents, a laptop, and the resolve not to be erased.
I studied the laws: CPR 52.30. The Human Rights Act. Practice Direction 12J. The Family Procedure Rules. I built my claim piece by piece, while dealing with homelessness, trauma, and the weight of everything I had already survived.
This wasn’t just about technicalities. It was about truth. It was about challenging a pattern where courts fail to apply safeguarding, fail to listen to survivors, and fail to recognise that power and property are often weaponised long after physical abuse ends.
My story isn’t rare. That’s what makes it terrifying.
Too many survivors experience the silence of the legal system — the brushed-off evidence, the ignored diagnoses, the subtle (and not-so-subtle) discrediting of our pain. It happens quietly. But its impact is loud. Evictions. Debt. Loss. Homelessness.
But I believe silence must be broken.
I shared my journey on my podcast, Silent Screams, Loud Strength, and I now share it here to say: You are not alone. And justice, no matter how delayed, is still worth fighting for.
Filing that judicial review was terrifying. My hands shook. My stomach ached. But I pressed send — and with it, I sent a message: I exist. I matter. And I will not be erased.
To every survivor still navigating a broken system: Keep going. Document your truth. Raise your voice. There is power in the paperwork. There is purpose in the process. And most of all — there is still hope.
Because while I may be homeless, I am not defeated.
#SilentScreamsLoudStrength #JudicialReview #JusticeForSurvivors #TraumaInformedJustice #HomelessNotDefeated