Publication and Correction Policy
Last updated: 26 September 2026
This sets out what Fathers' Inquiry publishes, how to tell it that something is wrong, and what it does about it.
1. What Is Published
Recordings. Edited testimony from a father, with a transcript, a short neutral summary, and a note saying what was checked and what could not be.
Written analysis. Articles built from published data, with every figure carrying its source, the year of the data, and what the figure does not show.
Refusal statistics. How many accounts were declined, and in categories, why.
Nothing is published that has not been through the checks in the Rules of Procedure.
2. How Accounts Are Described
A recording is an account given to the Inquiry. It is one person's description of his own experience. It has not been tested the way a court would test it, nobody has cross-examined it, and the people described in it have not answered it.
Fathers' Inquiry does not decide whether an account is true. It records it, checks what documents can check, and says on the recording itself what it was able to check and what it was not.
Nobody is named. Not the witness, and not the other parent, judges, lawyers, officers, caseworkers or experts. Accounts are generalised so that what remains describes a process rather than a person. Where that cannot be done, the account is not published.
3. Where Figures Come From
No figure appears on this site unless a reader can see its source without leaving the page: the organisation that published it, the year of the data, what it counts, and a link.
Every figure carries the complication that goes with it – what it does not show, and what someone who disagrees would correctly point out. A figure without that is not published, and this is enforced by the site itself rather than left to an author to remember.
Where Fathers' Inquiry has done its own arithmetic on somebody else's published table, it says so and attributes the calculation to itself, not to the source.
Figures are re-checked against their sources, and each carries the date it was last checked.
4. If Something Here Is Wrong
Write to contact@fathersinquiry.com. Say which page, which sentence, and what is wrong with it. If you have something that shows it is wrong, include it. You do not need a lawyer to do this, and you do not need to threaten anything.
What happens next
| Within 3 working days | You get an acknowledgement from a person, confirming what is being looked at |
|---|---|
| Within 14 days | You get an answer: corrected, not corrected with reasons, or still being checked with a date |
If a correction is obvious – a wrong number, a wrong year, a misattributed source – it is made straight away rather than waiting for the process to finish.
What a correction looks like
- The page keeps its address. Nothing is quietly deleted.
- A note at the foot says what changed and when.
- Where the error was material, the note says so plainly rather than describing it as a clarification.
- Where a recording has been copied to other platforms, the correction is applied to every copy in the mirror register, and the date each was updated is recorded.
Corrections are visible. A record that corrects itself silently is not a record.
If the answer is no
You are told why. If you disagree, say so and it will be looked at again by someone who was not involved the first time.
5. If a Recording Is About You
If you believe a published recording describes proceedings you were part of, write to contact@fathersinquiry.com.
Two things are worth knowing before you do.
No one is named in anything published here, and accounts are generalised specifically so that they do not identify the people described. If you recognise a case, that is a matter Fathers' Inquiry takes seriously, because recognition by someone who already knows the case is the risk this whole process exists to reduce.
Say what identifies it, not who you are, if you would rather not identify yourself. A message saying "the recording published on [date] contains a detail that identifies a specific person" is enough to start.
What happens then:
- The recording is reviewed against the detail you have identified.
- Where material identifies someone, it is removed or generalised further, and the recording is republished.
- Where the recording cannot be made safe by editing, it is withdrawn.
- You are told the outcome.
A request under this section is not treated as a complaint about the content of the account. It is treated as a possible failure of the de-identification process, which is a more serious thing.
6. Withdrawal by a Witness
Before publication – seven days, absolute. After a witness approves the exact file, he has seven days to withdraw for any reason or none. Nothing is published. There is no discussion and no persuasion.
After publication – fourteen days, and here is exactly what is promised. On request within fourteen days of publication, with no reason needed, Fathers' Inquiry will:
- remove the recording from this site;
- write to every platform holding a copy, asking for removal, and record the date it asked;
- leave a short notice at the recording's address rather than a dead link.
After fourteen days, requests are considered and granted where there is a safeguarding reason.
What is not promised, and cannot be. Fathers' Inquiry cannot retrieve what people have already downloaded, what others have quoted, or copies uploaded by people it has no relationship with. What is promised above is what Fathers' Inquiry itself will do, because that is what it controls.
Protection can always be increased. It cannot be reduced – including at a witness's own later request – because reducing it would expose a child and another parent who never agreed to any of it.
7. Withdrawn and Amended Recordings
A withdrawn recording keeps its address and shows a short notice saying it has been withdrawn. It is not deleted into a dead link, and the old content does not remain.
An amended recording keeps its address, carries the note described in §4, and the previous version is not served.
8. Legal Requests
Legal correspondence should go to contact@fathersinquiry.com and will be acknowledged.
Fathers' Inquiry does not remove material solely because removal has been demanded. It removes material that is wrong, that identifies someone, or that it should not have published. Those are assessed on what is shown, not on who is asking or how forcefully.
Requests and their outcomes are recorded, and the number received is included in the published statistics. Individual correspondence is not published.
9. What Is Never Published
- Anything identifying a child. Regardless of what any parent consents to.
- The name of any person described in an account.
- Any recording of a court proceeding, from any jurisdiction, however it was obtained.
- Any account subject to a publication ban, an order, or a confidentiality clause.
- Any un-edited recording.
- Any application, whether accepted or declined.
10. Changes to This Policy
When this changes, the date at the top changes and a note at the foot says what changed.