Mumsnet Talk

Yes, and does Lundy Bancroft advocate your OP's position, SGM? i.e. any incidence of DV means the child and father go without contact?

It's a fraught situation, and v delicate, with the long term interests of the child paramount, which is difficult to assess from case to case, from which blanket assumptions are fairly useless to learn from.

Fwiw telling a poster who's expressing an emotion about an emotional subject that their opinion isn't valid is a silencing thing to do. A child has died, domestic violence has been involved

Just because you don't like something someone posts doesn't mean the op doesn't have a valid opinion. Listening to opinions and debating that sensitively when an op is obviously upset is a lot better than belittleling + demeaning an opinion

I also find your lack of empathy for my story slightly disconcerting

Yes, I think any, ANY incidence of dv should involve removal of contact.

After removal of contact a dv perpetrator should be placed on a perpetrator programme and once satisfactory involvement is seen then contact should be reintroduced under supervision.

Dv is too damaging to children to allow them to witness any abuse.

I also think the default position for a person (be they male or female actually) who has been proven to be violent within a relationship forfeit any right to access with the children till they've completed a perpatrator programme successfully, then contact should be introduced gradually and continually assessed, taking the childrens reaction to it very very seriously.

Right now it isn't.

So if a mother slaps the father she shouldn't have any contact with the children until she's done a course?

I think if someone's violent it should be supervised or non-direct access only.

I would like to know where the evidence is that violent men are likely to get residence orders for children. This is completely contrary to my own experience in a decade in the family courts. But if my experience is so unusual, I would like to know. What are the statistics, and where do they come from?

In my experience courts take violence very seriously: since the re L judgment in 2000 when the research of drs Sturge and Glaser was first exhaustively considered. Violence against a partner or children has been recognised as a massive parenting failure for a very long time now.

Fuzzy said it so much eloquently.

Any body, male or female, who commits abuse against children should have thier access to the revoked until such a time as they have successfully addressed their issues through attendance on a perpetrator programme. Ime woman who are seen to abuse are dealt with more harshly than men, it comes across as "well men abuse, there's no point dealing with it" which is a shame for everybody involved and for men generally.

Pan, you are belittleling the op again, bad form.

Spero - I've never seen that, from DV and court experience in 3 decades of experience - in fact au contraire.

It just seems we have a very ill-founded OP, which the OP isn't willing to defend.

I am uncomfortable with fact that disagreeing with the op is characterised as 'belittling' or 'silencing'.

I would like to see some evidence to support assertions which in my experience are just not true. And when presented in such a emotive debate, using a very poor piece of fact lite journalism ... I find that worrying.

Also in my experience a good proportion of violence cases - say 30% roughly - involve low level violence from both men and women - shouting, using, breaking possessions, each calling police on each other. All this in eye or ear shot of the children.

They don't get sent on violence perpetrator programmes because none are available. The success rates for such programmes seem to be extremely dubious to say the least.

So what is being advocated ? The children of these couples are removed from both of them?

Sorry 'pushing' not 'using'

SDT Women's Aid quote 75% on their website. www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-survivors-handbook.asp?section=000100010008000100380002

That link talks about CONTACT. It also does not specify whether the contact was supervised or subject to other conditions.

The op particularly said violent men are likely to get 'custody' - a term unknown in law since 1989 when 'residence' and 'contact' became nomenclature.

It really does not help this debate to assert things which are simply untrue. Violent men do not get residence orders - in my experience any way.

They may well get contact because there are ways this can be managed safely.

And I think we need to stop calling it DV and focusing so much on specific acts of physical violence, which can be caused by shock/panic or self-defence. I'd probably kick someone if they tickled me without warning, but to call that DV would be ridiculous. Whereas my ex never hit or hurt me at all but his emotional abuse was incredibly damaging.

Violence is a symptom, not the problem in itself. Although of course men who have shown propensity for extreme violence should be treated with even more caution.

I have lived through domestic violence as a child within the last 3 decades and have personal experience of a perpetrator of child sex abuse and violence being given rights to the children he abused. That's my statistic. 5 children abused and the courts allowed it.

Spero, I haven't seen any belittleling etc from you.

I'd like to engage in discussion but it seems pointless when some posters are trying to continually belittle the op and I may go the way of the op and find elsewhere to discuss this.

From the link I just posted:

Contact with the other parent

If you have left home because of your partner's violence, you will probably have taken the children with you, and will probably want to continue to care for them and make a home for them. When both your children and your ex-partner (the non-resident or 'absent' parent) wish to see each other, and this can be arranged safely and without major problems, this is likely to benefit everyone concerned. However, in many cases, your safety and that of your children may be a serious concern.

Many mothers have good reason to fear any ongoing contact between their children and their former partner, but they often find that family court professionals minimise or ignore these fears because they are convinced that ongoing contact with both parents is in the interest of the children in the long-term. Many mothers who have escaped from their abusive partners therefore find it extremely difficult to protect their children from ongoing abuse because they are required by the court to comply with an order for contact.

When a parent applies for contact with his (or her) children, under the Children Act 1989, this will almost always be granted. One fundamental principle of the legislation is that the child's welfare should be paramount - and in most cases, this is assumed to be upheld by maintaining his or her contact with both parents: in 2003, only 601 out of 67,184 contact applications (less than 1%) were refused. The courts fail, in many cases, to take domestic violence seriously, despite the introduction in April 2001 of Good Practice Guidelines recommending that the dangers are highlighted at an early stage in the proceedings, so that the safety of the child and the resident parent is secured before, during and after contact visits.

In three-quarters of cases when courts have ordered contact with an abusive parent the children suffered further abuse. Some children have even been ordered to have contact with a parent who has committed offences against children. In some cases, children have even been killed as a result of contact or residence arrangements. (See References and further reading.) There are also many cases in which an abusing parent has used a contact visit to trace the mother's whereabouts, or to assault or otherwise abuse her further.
www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-survivors-handbook.asp?section=000100010008000100380002

Pan, what the fuck?

Oh, the references are on the same page

References and further reading

Aris, R., Harrison, C. and Humphreys, C. (2002) 'Safety and child contact' (London: LCD).
Barron et al., (1999) 'From Utility to Rights? The Presumption of Contact in Practice' International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family Vol. 13 (pp111-131).
Hester, M. and Radford, L. (1996) 'Domestic violence and child contact arrangements in Britain and Denmark' (Bristol: Policy Press).
Radford, L. Sayers, S. and AMICA, 1999: 'Unreasonable fears?' (Bristol: Women's Aid Federation of England).
Saunders, H. with Barron, J. (2004) 'Failure to protect?' (Bristol: Women's Aid).
Women's Aid has compiled a list of 29 children in 13 families who have been killed as a result of contact or residence arrangements in the last 10 years. Ten of these children have been killed since 2002. You can purchase '29 child homicides' from our Shop section.

^ That last one is particularly chilling. 29 children from 1994 to 2004. It's almost 10 years later now - I wonder if anything has changed?

Iliana, I am sorry to hear of your experience, all the more because those I know in the system take violence and abuse very seriously and it is sad and shocking when things go so badly wrong.

I completely agree that 'domestic violence' is a ridiculous and contemptible term. It is 'violence' plain and simple and should never be tolerated.

Butit isn't as simple as just saying violent men should disappear from their children's lives. Many children still love their fathers or at the very least deserve the opportunity to deal with the reality of their father in a safe way. To simply expunge him runs risk that they will either idealise or demonise him, and that isn't healthy either.

So I support safe, well managed contact if that is found to be in child's best interests. But we have vanishingly few good contact centres.

Spero, in the OP's link, the court ordered the children live with their mother in the summer and their father the rest of the time, that sounds a bit beyond contact to me, but I may have misread which link you were referring to.

[[http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-articles.asp?section=00010001002200330001&itemid=1245 This is the study - 10 years old now but the website hasn't been updated during this time, on a site which is pretty up to date in general, I would take this to mean that not much has changed since this time which is awful.

Wall LJ published a response to that piece - on ipad so can't link, but try googling it,it is well worth a read and provides another perspective.