Custody battle - abusive father. In Scotland.

[ToriaPumpkin]

Please excuse any vagueness on my part, I'm asking on behalf of a friend who isn't on MN. I've put that it's Scotland as I know someone who works for cafcass in the NE who has given her insight and her experiences are different to what we've seen/been told so far.

A few years back she met someone, he's very charming and works as a psychologist with children. They got serious very quickly and went travelling. He proposed and everyone was delighted. While they were away she fell pregnant, again a very happy event.

The traditional story unfolded, during the pregnancy he became verbally abusive, ramping up to physical and sexual abuse after their DD was born. She eventually got up the courage to leave, reported him to the police and took her daughter to live with her parents. Some of his behaviour had been witnessed by her father and earlier this year he was charged with, and convicted of violent and aggressive behaviour. The charge stopped short of domestic violence, though there were many incidences, down to her waking up certain she'd been drugged and raped.

This week she is due to attend court as he's applied for custody. She's been told that despite his conviction he's still entitled to be an active parent to his daughter, up to 50%.

Obviously we all hope that due to the conviction and his previous behaviour he will be granted only supervised visits, but she's been warned that she'll be expected to scale those back and allow him unsupervised visits and eventually contact. She's desperately worried he'll be granted custody.

Can anyone give me some light in the dark here? Obviously I don't have the full story, and I fully suspect that as she's in such a dark and scary place just now that she's taking more negatives than positives from any conversations, but I just can't believe that a system would be so willing to walk all over the safety of a woman and her daughter and the mental health of both (she is under no impression that he won't manipulate and poison the daughter) in order to ensure a father gets his parental rights.