June Venters KC > 3PB > London

June Venters KC was called to the bar in 2017, having been the first woman solicitor to be appointed as Queen’s Counsel in 2006.

June works in the fields of Public Law Child Care, Family Law, International Child Abduction, and Crime, acting in the most serious cases within those fields of law, such as the Damilola Taylor murder; the Dome robbery; a high profile celebrity’s brother historical sexual offence and a well-known baby murder trial.

Her busy practice is focused on:

Representing numerous defendants accused of sexual offences of children including rape; indecent assault [as it then was]; sexual assault, bestiality. Representing the social worker in the Victoria Climbié case in respect of the Care Standards Tribunal. Representing numerous parents and children, Local Authorities and interveners in care proceedings where sexual abuse and non-accidental injury alleged as well as Satanic Abuse, declaration of parentage and paternity issues. June regularly represents clients in the High Court and the Court of Appeal. Representing parents and other parties in private law proceedings including cases involving parental alienation/implacable hostility, allegations involving sexual and physical abuse and domestic abuse and declaration of parentage and paternity issues.

Her extraordinary blend of professional qualifications, expertise, and experience means she is uniquely placed to deliver the highest level of client service.

June is described by the legal directory Chambers & Partners as " compassionate and exceptionally hard working," "a tenacious and fearless advocate" and "extremely well prepared and dedicated to bringing the best to clients." She is also rated as "a very high-calibre performer" who is "extremely personable and is a really strong presence."

She was nominated at the Family Law Awards for "Family KC of the Year" in 2023 and 2022 and in 2019 was shortlisted for "Woman Solicitor of the Year" at the Law Society Excellence Awards and for the "Women in Law" Award at the British Legal Awards. In 2018, she won the "Highly Commended Solicitor Advocate" Award at the Law Society Excellence Awards, having earlier won the “Best Woman Solicitor Managing a Legal Aid Practice (AWS).”

June has made numerous appearances on TV and radio including Newsnight, Breakfast TV, Channel 5's “When Evil came to Rochdale” in 2024, "What Happened Next,” a BBC 4 documentary and “Law Women,” a BBC 1 documentary. She is a regular presenter of legal seminars for the profession, most recently giving talks on parental alienation, vulnerable witnesses, coercive/controlling behaviour and advocacy skills for lawyers.

Family

June Venters KC is a formidable family law barrister who regularly represents clients in the Family Court, High Court and Appeal Courts and appears in these cases, nationwide.

Reported cases include:

Public law proceedings in a 25-day composite Final Hearing - November 2023: Represented the mother in the hearing which included a complex fact finding exercise involving serious allegations which were being pursued contemporaneously in the criminal court. June successfully argued that the court should hear oral evidence from the child complainant. June successfully challenged the reliability and admissibility of the evidence from the complainant as well as from the police, whose investigation and questioning of witnesses they submitted had been in serious breach of the relevant guidelines, practice and procedure. The judge ruled that the Local Authority had failed to prove, to the required standard, all the allegations against the mother.

RE: A, B and C (Child Contracting Gonorrhoea) [2023] EWFC 211 (26 October 2023): Represented the father in medically complex care proceedings. During the Court of Appeal hearing, June raised the point that the Judge had conflated the conventional finding of an individual on the balance of probabilities with a pool finding which is on the basis of a “real possibility”. Lord Justice Jackson in Re B 2019 paras 46 and 47 had made clear how a court can make a pool finding and that a pool finding is not possible for one. Therefore, if it was accepted that the joint finding of the parents acting together was unfair and couldn’t stand, the court couldn’t simply leave the father in the “pool” as there couldn’t just be one person in a pool finding. The case was re-heard in October.

Re: L 2021: Represented the partner of a mother of two children who had been joined to care proceedings as an intervener following the death of the mother’s youngest child, having suffered a catalogue of physical abuse which ultimately resulted in a final devastating injury and death. Care proceedings had been issued because the court needed to determine whether the Mother’s older child should be removed from her permanent care. Judge ruled that the mother’s assertions that he caused all the injuries to the child lacked credibility and that she could not be entirely exonerated and most significantly representations advanced on her behalf that she was the “victim of his control, unable to exercise freewill” were simply not accepted.

RE E (CARE PROCEEDINGS: WELFARE DETERMINATION) [2021] EWFC 52/RE E (Care Proceedings: Fact-Finding Hearing) [2020] EWFC 24/RE E (Abduction: Article 13b Deferred Return Order) [2019] EWHC 256 (Fam) (13 February 2019): Represented Russian mother whose mental health capacity fluctuated throughout the proceedings. She was accused of having raped her partner’s minor son whilst they all lived in Spain. She fled Spain to the UK and care proceedings in respect of her and her partner’s daughter were issued. The case was highly unusual because included a finding of fact hearing in relation to the Spanish allegations during which the partner’s minor son gave evidence. The court dismissed those allegations. The court made findings against the father involving very serious, life-threatening domestic abuse inflicted upon the mother. Mother was separately represented in relation to separate extradition proceedings. She was extradited to Spain at the conclusion of these proceedings.

Re D: (A child:parental alienation) [2018] EWFC 864 (19th October 2018): Represented a father who successfully proved that the mother of their son was deliberately alienating him from his father. This finding followed the father being criminally investigated for child abuse. The Family Court dismissed all such allegations after a fully contested hearing and which included the son giving evidence.

Re R (Children) [2018] EWCA Civ 198: Successfully appealed on behalf of a father found to have deliberately killed his wife in a fact-finding hearing in care proceedings when he had been acquitted of murder in the criminal courts on the ground of self-defence. The judgment deals with the extent to which if at all, the Family Court should import criminal principles from the criminal law into family law proceedings. The judgment also deals with Article 6 “right to a fair trial.” The Court of Appeal set aside the lower court’s judgment in its entirety and the matter was ordered to be re-tried by a different High Court Judge. The appeal resulted in the children remaining within the family as opposed to either long-term foster care or adoption that had been the original care plan prior to the appeal.

Re P and Q (Children: Care Proceedings: [2015] EWFC 26 (Fam): represented the father in a case in the High Court where the Judge found the mother and her partner had conducted horrific physical and psychological abuse of two young children in the Hampstead area of North London, in which sadism and witchcraft had been a feature of allegations made against not only the father but the children’s school teachers, and many other professionals involved in the children’s lives. The Judge took the highly unusual step of granting permission to the father, after hearing extensive representations by June, for the BBC to interview him. All allegations against the father were dismissed and the children were subsequently placed in his long term care. The case featured in a recent Channel 5 film exploring one of the most infamous cases of 'Satanic Panic.'

LBL-v-N 2014-2015: Represented the mother who made allegations of ritual abuse, forced marriage, rape and murder against the Father in care proceedings. The case also raised issues of jurisdiction and disclosure from French Authorities of police and social services investigations.

Re N (Placement Order: Alternative option to Adoption) Court of Appeal 2013: Court of Appeal set aside a Placement Order in care proceedings which had been made pursuant to Section 52(1)(b) Adoption and Children Act 2002. This was because the Judge had failed to consider whether the welfare throughout the child’s life required adoption at a time when the court was aware the maternal grandmother wished to care for the child that necessitated further investigation.

Re T-v-T EWCA [2010] 1366: Represented the mother and her same sex partner. The Court of Appeal substituted a Shared Residence Order by two gay parents who were in different same sex relationships for a Shared Residence Order by the two gay birth parents and the mother’s same sex partner.

Adoption - Re R (Adoption: Disclosure) [1999] 2 FLR 1123: instructed as a solicitor in this case, June represented all of the children. A local authority sought care orders in respect of seven children of a family, and the care plan proposed that four of them should, in the long term, be adopted. Held that making the care orders was correct but as a preamble excluding adoption in respect of the four children – reg 9(1) of the Adoption Agencies Regulations 1983 (SI 1983/1964) obliged an authority when acting as an adoption agency to provide the adoption panel with 'a written report containing … any information relevant to the proposed placement. The adoption agency was obliged to state the views of the guardian in its written report to the panel. Moreover, reg 10(3) in combination with reg 9(4) entitled the panel to re-quest the adoption agency to provide further information, including the views of the guardian.

Other notable cases Re: TB-v-S: Successfully represented a Father in 2020 after the removal of the children from the Mother’s care following a complex Fact Finding Hearing and Final Hearing, during which the mother was found to have made serious false allegations against the father of sexual and physical abuse and in respect of which Mother was found to have alienated the children. The mother then returned the case to court in 2022 making yet further allegations against the father. The case has resulted in all future contact [direct and indirect] by the mother is to be determined by the father and is to be supervised. A barring order against the Mother for 2 years was ordered.

Re: B: Determination that mother and her husband had falsified documentation resulting in incorrect registration of child’s surname. This was a case where paternity had been deliberately and wrongfully denied to cause the child to believe her father was the mother’s husband. After a fully contested final hearing in which facts were determined, father, whom June represented achieved a shared lived with order that was bitterly contested as well as a costs order.

A Local Authority in NE England: June is representing a local authority in complex care proceedings involving parental alienation. Authority was seeking the removal of a 9-year-old child who had been subjected to proven significant parental alienation. Care proceedings were issued in June 2023 during private law proceedings between the parents, when the local authority became concerned about the negative influence that the domiciliary parent was having. All the professionals, including the expert child psychologist to be finely balanced on the question of removal, considered the case. Following this decision, the parent from whom the removal had been ordered pursued a stay of proceedings and permission to appeal. June successfully opposed this and the child was removed.

Crown Court case – sexual offences: Represented a father accused of historical sexual offences against his two daughters, now in their teens. The case has a long history involving family proceedings. The father was clear that he was not guilty of the offences and that they emanated from the mother in her quest to alienate the children from their father. After a fully contested trial, he was acquitted of all offences.

Public Law Children June Venters KC specialises in every aspect of care proceedings and has considerable experience in cases involving the most serious of allegations and involving:

Death of/catastrophic injuries to a child Physical injuries, often referred to as Non Accidental Injuries [NAI] Genetic disorders including Vitamin D/Ricketts/(Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) [EDS] where symptoms can often mimic suspected child abuse Fabricated Induced Illness (FII) Sexual abuse Ritualized child abuse such as symbolic or group clandestine activities with overtones of religious, magical, or satanic intent Child cruelty/neglect Cases of this nature often involve vulnerable children and vulnerable adults. As a Law Society trainer of vulnerable witnesses, June is experienced in the questioning of such witnesses and does so sensitively, whilst ensuring that every relevant issue is fully and properly explored.

Cross over between care proceedings and criminal cases It is not uncommon for cases of this nature to involve the police. Often the person against whom allegations have been made will have been arrested and is either awaiting a charging decision or a criminal trial. June’s criminal experience both as a lawyer and as a Recorder in the Crown Court provides June with the advantage of knowing, in depth, how cases are investigated by the police and prosecuted through the criminal court and which often takes place alongside care proceedings.

This knowledge is ever more apparent by the Appeal Court’s acceptance of her representations in the case of Re R (Children) [2018] EWCA Civ 198. In that case, and following the unsuccessful attempts to prosecute the father for the alleged murder of the children’s mother, the Court of Appeal agreed with June’s submissions that it was fundamentally wrong for the Family Court judgment to be drawn into an analysis of factual evidence in proceedings relating to the welfare of children based upon criminal law principles and concepts.

Private Law Children June has extensive experience in all areas of private law children disputes, including:

Parental Responsibility Children arrangements [with whom a child[ren] should live and stay and spend time with] Children re-location [in the UK or abroad] Same Sex Families Prohibited steps eg Child abduction Specific Issues eg Medical treatment/attendance at a specific school June represents clients where often there is an intractable dispute also known as parental alienation or where a parent is often deprived of having or sustaining a significant relationship with their child[ren] and which ultimately is a form of child abuse. In the most serious of cases this can result in long term consequences for a child’s mental health and requires court’s intervention, often assisted by experts instructed during the course of the proceedings. In extreme cases a child or parent will make very serious allegations of child abuse by the other parent which can lead to a police investigation and even a criminal trial.

June recognises the immense sensitivity of these cases whilst at the same time recognises the importance of the allegations being properly and swiftly investigated by the family court, often in a fact finding hearing because without such investigation and determination, the allegations remain unresolved and can be resurrected at any time in the future.

Whilst a family court determination that the allegations are not proved does not automatically result in any criminal investigation or prosecution coming to an end, it is persuasive authority upon which representations to the police or prosecuting authority can be made. June has succeeded in doing so on a number of cases in which she has been involved and which has resulted in the criminal investigation/charges being dropped.

The impact which cases of this nature have on families can be devastating. However, they can also affect a parent’s life outside the family, such as their careers, for example, where a parent is accused of physical or sexual abuse. June regularly represents parents whose careers and or reputations are at risk as a result of cases of this nature.

International Private Law June Venters KC is experienced in all areas of international disputes over children, including acting in cases where:

Children are/being removed without a parent’s consent from the UK to a country abroad Children are/being removed without a parent’s consent from a country abroad to the UK Contest over parental contact with a child abroad June has represented clients whose children have been removed without parental consent and moved to another country. This can be very distressing for any parent who are at risk of losing contact with their child[ren] both in the short term and potentially in the long term. Cases are particularly complex where children are removed to countries who are not part of the Hague Convention and who do not have a reciprocal arrangement with the country from whom the child has been removed.

These cases require swift action to be taken, particularly where the child[ren]’s whereabouts are unknown. Assistance from Government authorities is required in order to trace a child’s whereabouts and expert knowledge of procedures involved is required.

For example, June represented children who were abducted by a parent from the UK to Northern Cyprus. June was ordered by a High Court Judge to negotiate their return by personally accompanying the Children’s Guardian to the location where they were staying in Northern Cyprus. The negotiations proved to be successful and both children were returned to the UK.

Family Law Arbitration

June Venters KC is a children law arbitrator who is qualified through the Institute of Family Law Arbitrators [IFLA] and a panel member of the Chartered institute of Arbitrators [CIArb].

The IFLA and the IFLA Schemes are the result of collaboration between Resolution, the Family Law Bar Association (FLBA), The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) and the Centre for Child and Family Law Reform (CCFLR). The Schemes operate under the Institute of Family Law Arbitrators (IFLA), a not for profit company, the members of which are CIArb, Resolution and the FLBA. CCFLR is also represented on the Board. IFLA is chaired by Lord Falconer.

IFLA has developed its arbitration schemes to enable parties to resolve family disputes more quickly, cheaply and in a more flexible and less formal setting than a court room.

Mediation

June Venters KC is an accredited senior family mediator and is qualified to undertake child consultations within mediation. June is particularly experienced in child consultations within mediation and has the additional qualification to do so.

June was invited to participate in the Voice of the Child Advisory Group; the government select committee on mediation and was host to senior government ministers in 2010, including the Legal Aid Minister and the Attorney General who, with the media, visited June at her pro bono clinic in a GP’s surgery in order to observe and discuss with her the mediation process.

Details of this can be found on the Ministry of Justice website. In addition and because of June’s recognised ability and experience she was invited to lecture in Latvia on family mediation.

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