It has previously been suggested that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used in a number of ways to bring significant benefits to the Family Justice System. Last week we have seen the potential of this as Dr Craig Childress, registered Clinical Psychologist in the USA has released an AI called Eliza to the world. Eliza has been developed to support parents and professionals in Family Court cases for FREE.
WARNING: This article has been provided for information only. Right to Love has had no role in the development of Eliza, nor do we receive any financial benefit from sharing awareness of this tool. If you have any questions regarding Eliza or would like to know more we recommend reviewing Dr Craig Childress’ social media on YouTube (Introducing Eliza 5.0 then Eliza’s Arrival: The Portal Opens) and Facebook for information on how to engage with the tool or his consultancy services. Use of Eliza is at your own risk.
Dr Childress has been campaigning to bring a solution to family courts because he maintains that one parent or the other is using the child as a weapon against their ex. This results in psychological abuse of the child and their ex. He has introduced Eliza to key areas of knowledge relating to psychology, including but not limited to, personality disorders, attachment, family systems and trauma. She is currently a forensic tool to review recommendations by expert witnesses and family court professionals such as Cafcass, from the lens of child psychological abuse.
Right to Love was given a sneak preview of Eliza and whilst it is early days, there is no doubt that it has the capability to change the world of Family Courts and improve the lives of their most important service users, parents and children.
We uploaded a real historic case of suspected child psychological abuse and asked Eliza to complete a full case review. The case involved 3 children Mona (born 2007) and twin boys David and Geoff (born 2011). Father ended the relationship with their mother prior to the twins first birthdays because he was worried that arguments between himself and the mother were not healthy for the children. he felt she was not allowing him to be the father he wanted to be.
The parents co-parented successfully on mothers terms for almost a year, father visiting the children after work every evening for months until mother reduced time with the children. All contact was stopped when mother found out father had started a new relationship and reported the father to the police for harassment. After 13 weeks of no contact, the father made an application to court.
The case did not involve any Domestic Abuse like the case of Sara Sharif but during the second application, similar to Sara’s mother, the father admitted smacking the children’s bottoms on very rare occasions, not hard enough to leave a mark. A parenting course was recommended and father did not use smacking again. After which a number of years passed before the final court case. Allegations were also made that the mother was emotionally abusive to the children, neighbours reported she shouted at the children most days and in particular called the boys names. No investigation was undertaken into these allegations.
The following files were uploaded to Eliza:
- Position statements
- Cafcass reports
- Court orders
- Emails that had been submitted to Cafcass by the children’s Aunt Amy
- A timeline of events mapped to Dr Craig Childress’s diagnostic model for child psychological abuse in family court and the Cafcass CIAF and
- A report by a registered psychologist (Dr ABC) who had reviewed all the above and been consulted by Aunt Amy for advice given their input to the CIAF.
We asked Eliza a series of questions. Most responses were very quick and surprisingly reassuring. The quality of the responses were impressive and it was very clear that Eliza would be helpful to parents and court involved professionals in:
- Reviewing cases and highlighting where there were markers for child psychological abuse
- Cross checking evidence
- Asking questions to help get better knowledge of the family dynamics
- Information for preparation of position statements
- Analysing the performance of expert witnesses
- Preparing questions for cross examination
There were some teething issues. When asked how long the case review would take, Eliza estimated up to 90 minutes because of the volume of data provided. It actually took 3 hours.
Eliza offered to produce outputs in different formats. When opting for PDF’s it worked the first two times but after that no other PDF’s were generated. So the text option was used which allowed us to copy and paste the chat into a document.
Whilst Eliza confirmed the files would be held securely and confidentially in the chat, and that the information was only held in the session between her and the user, Dr Childress recommends copying and pasting the the chat into a document you store securely and then deleting chats afterwards.
The output Eliza provides is highly valuable for information but it cannot be submitted as evidence in family courts. However, parents, lawyers and barristers can use it to help them formulate submissions. Dr Childress can also provide written sign off of Eliza’s case analysis though his consultancy service for a fee. The instructions for accessing Eliza are on Dr Childress’ website.
Overall Eliza is impressive, but don’t just take our word for it, try it our for yourself and see the responses AI provided to Right to Love’s questions in relation to: