He Said, She Said
On sale
1st May 2025
Price: £20
Genre
Nonfiction / Domestic Violence / Gender & The Law / Gender Studies: Women / Memoirs
Selected:
Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781399612449
If you and your family needed help, could you trust the law to be on your side?
Award-winning barrister Charlotte Proudman has dedicated her working life to representing women who find themselves in need of help from the family law courts. Time and again, she has watched as these women – many of whom have experienced the very worst traumas imaginable – are let down by the system that is supposed to protect them. Seeking only justice and safety, they have instead been met with cruelty and disdain, deemed unreliable witnesses compared to the men who abused them.
From family courts failing to protect victims from abusers to the misogynistic bullying Charlotte herself receives from senior members of her profession, the problem is clear: no matter their circumstances, women across the country are suffering at the hands of a legal system built by men.
But change is on the horizon. In He Said, She Said, Proudman gives voice to the women whose stories are all too often brushed aside in the name of giving abusers ‘the benefit of the doubt’. Through real-life cases spanning forced marriage, domestic abuse, child abduction and female genital mutilation, Proudman highlights the troubling biases and shocking prejudice that underlie our legal system – and in a book that is at once thrilling, engaging and deeply compassionate, puts forward her own inspiring vision for long-term change.
Award-winning barrister Charlotte Proudman has dedicated her working life to representing women who find themselves in need of help from the family law courts. Time and again, she has watched as these women – many of whom have experienced the very worst traumas imaginable – are let down by the system that is supposed to protect them. Seeking only justice and safety, they have instead been met with cruelty and disdain, deemed unreliable witnesses compared to the men who abused them.
From family courts failing to protect victims from abusers to the misogynistic bullying Charlotte herself receives from senior members of her profession, the problem is clear: no matter their circumstances, women across the country are suffering at the hands of a legal system built by men.
But change is on the horizon. In He Said, She Said, Proudman gives voice to the women whose stories are all too often brushed aside in the name of giving abusers ‘the benefit of the doubt’. Through real-life cases spanning forced marriage, domestic abuse, child abduction and female genital mutilation, Proudman highlights the troubling biases and shocking prejudice that underlie our legal system – and in a book that is at once thrilling, engaging and deeply compassionate, puts forward her own inspiring vision for long-term change.
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Reviews
An indictment of a legal system that protects abusers at the expense of survivors. Charlotte Proudman exposes the biases and institutional failures that silence women and endanger children with clarity and conviction. He Said She Said is a call to action
In her powerful, passionate and shocking account of representing traumatised women in the family courts, leading barrister Charlotte Proudman reveals the urgent need to make the law fairer, to achieve justice for women. Her eloquent arguments, scholarship and first-hand experience of fighting for justice for women and their children makes this book essential reading. As inspirational as it is shocking in its revelations of prejudice and misogyny, Proudman gives us an invaluable bird's eye view into processes that, until recently, were conducted in secrecy. Combining memoir with case illustrations, the book is beautifully written, informative and rightfully disturbing
Charlotte Proudman is a brave outspoken barrister. Here she exposes the rooted biases that harm women and children in the family courts; her searing analysis puts the system in the dock but also provides a roadmap for reform. Press this book into the hands of policy makers, politicians ...and every judge. A triumph!