Thank you for the advice. I have spoken to CAB over the phone yesterday afternoon and they have told me that I will need to return on the bail date, and to keep in touch with the police if I have any further questions.
They also told me that harassment is now seen to be much more serious than previously thought and as such, attracts a possible prison sentence of a maximum of 5 years.
I phoned the police yesterday afternoon, and the police officer I spoke to said they had informed xp that I was now on bail and were investigating my phone, and when I was due to return to the police.
I was also told that xp has explained to them that he feels under threat from me and fears what I will do to him. This adds considerable weight to his case.
It is all completely surreal to me. I was in a DV relationship with him, and he was the controlling bullying one. I have been punched whilst pregnant, had various pressure points squeezed to cause as much pain as possible whilst leaving no marks, he has stubbed out cigarettes on me, physically lifted me and moved me to where he wants me to be, throttled while sleeping, had my head rammed into a sofa. He has financially abused me, left me destitute, yet when the police have turned up, he is cool and calm and collected and I am a sobbing mess, because it is my life he was destroying and it was impossible to just sit back whilst he systematically destroyed everything I had, however, this only served to support his claims that I am crazy. The majority of the time, this cool approach works and he comes away looking like the victim and I am the nasty evil one.
He has been trying to gain residency of our child since I broke up with him years ago. I have a residency order for this purpose. He has made a barrage of allegations to SS to discredit me as a fit parent, all of which were found to be unsubstantiated.
He does not want our child permanently, he only wants to hurt me for daring to finish our relationship. Only a few weeks ago, he was asking me again if he could come back. The answer is always the same. No. It doesn't stop him trying. When he discovered I had begun seeing someone new, he went on another crusade to make my life difficult, because he refuses to acknowledge or see our child now, and it is our child who is suffering. I have tried to explain via text because he refused to answer his phone to me that our child is understandably upset at the lack of contact and possibly this is what he is construing as harassment?? I have also asked in the last month again via text because he refuses to answer my calls if he would be able to pay towards some new things our child needs. I received no reply.
Now I face going to prison because he is motivated by his desire to destroy me, hence wanting to remove our child from my care and because I didn't expect him to use requests concerning our child against me in this way.
He will win in the end and have our child removed from me, because he always gets what he wants in the end. He reads people very well and acts accordingly.
I am doomed!! My child is picking up on this anxiety now and we are not even half way through June, and now my child is having to be physically peeled away from me in hysterics every day to get in the door to school because of overhearing a couple of people sharing their concern with me for what has happened. Bad judgement from all concerned but most of all, another example of how I have upset my child.
I don't know how I can live in limbo like this for over a month more when I know it could easily be the last month I spend with my child for a long time.
By the way, the legal definition of harassment according to CAB is the sending of any type of text message, sext, photo message, video message, or voice mail from a mobile phone that causes the receiver to feel harassed, threatened, tormented, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise victimized.
"How do you legislate how a person should feel?" That was the question CAB left me to think about when I said that millions of texts or calls must come under harassment then.