No presents for DD?

[ilovemilton]

DD has been no contact with abusive DF since the summer, “breaking” the court order, but with his permission.

DF texts her in Nov, asking her what she would like for Christmas. She gives him a list. It’s the first time he has attempted to make any contact with her since it broke down. They have never had a good relationship.

DS attends contact on Christmas Day, she asks for her presents to be sent back with him. DF replied “nope, you chose to break the order, you get your presents when you attend.”

Tonight he brought DS home, with a bag of presents “from the family, not the ones from me.”

He knew all along that she won’t be attending again, they have no relationship at all.

AIBU to either expect him to send the presents, or not to have ever even asked what she wanted? Is he playing a cruel game or should DD just accept the consequences of not seeing him?

My oldest dc has gone NC with his Dad this year. I didn't tell him whether or not to accept gifts but the topic came up and I asked what he thinks will happen and he admitted that accepting the gift could be seen by his Dad as him being grabby or wanting to make up. His Dad did give him a gift and I had to tell ex not to read into him accepting.

That’s what I thought lyingwitch. If he really wanted to fix things, it would have been unconditional gifts in the hope that she would one day change her mind. Whether she was right or wrong to give him a list when he asked what she wanted, his subsequent behaviour has done nothing but alienate her further.

And for what it’s worth, i don’t think he does wish to fix things. It’s all about control. Why else would you tell DD not to attend if she didn’t want to and then on the same day threaten court for not attending.

As for dynamics of the family, I don’t monitor every text she sends to her DF. If I did I’m pretty sure this would be alienation.

ilovemilton from what you've just said, you absolutely DO need to be monitoring the texts. Your daughter shouldn't be texting her father, there's no need to be doing that as she doesn't want contact and you can't control what he sends back to her.

I get that 12 is a difficult age and she's torn between wanting a dad and not wanting this one the way he is but you need to protect her from herself because she's giving her dad the means to mentally abuse her. I would be blocking his number and monitoring her phone - for her sake.

To be honest, your children shouldn't be aware of the threat of court for not attending and it's clear that they are aware of this. That's not on and you really have to step on that. They're the children, you're the adult and the only reasonable one in this whole mess.

I think you need some expert help here, ilovemilton because your children are at the age where they're no longer little kids but equally not mature enough to deal with the outfalls that they're participating in and need protecting from.

Well apart from the initial upheaval when she first stopped going, there have been pretty much no texts from him anyway. Just the ones where she challenged him for trying to meet him when told by his solicitor and then he didn’t collect her, where he tells her she doesn’t have to go.

He didn’t even text her to ask about her exams or starting a new school.

Cafcass were the ones that told DD about court, the judge saying they were to attend and listed the possible consequences for her mum if she didn’t attend.

That is utterly disgraceful, ilovemilton, your children should not have been told this.

It's clear that your ex isn't going to behave like a father so it's better that he doesn't have contact with his children by phone. He can e-mail them instead - and you can monitor that. The benefit is that it will be in writing and you will be able to use that as evidence.

Please protect them and block him from their phones. I could not allow their father to abuse them via this medium for fear of what a court might say or do but you need proper advice urgently.

Cafcas and the courts sound cunts OP.

Fwiw my 12 year old dd stopped seeing her df in March of this year. I sat her down and said it was entirely her decision and I would support her. But that if it went back to court then she would have to be very clear with cafcas and the court why she had stopped seeing him.

I told her to write a timeline of events leading up to the decision she made and why she didn't want to do. I told her that it must be written by her and that I couldn't help with it and that I didn't want to see it at all and that she must keep it a secret from me but be prepared to share ir with cafcas if they asked.

I told her I would fight tooth and nail for her not to have to go back but that it was her decision and she had to be prepared to give her reasons why and help me.

Luckily her df hasn't even made an attempt to mend their relationship and dd is a much happier child since.

But I would speak to your dd and make sure ahe knows that if it goes back to.court she needs to fight her corner with you. She can't just leave it all on your shoulders.

Your ex sounds a cunt. I suspect your ds will soon not want to go either. It's so difficult to manage a relationship when you aren't involved between a vile, abusive man child and children.

She has fought from the beginning. She’s explained herself to cafcass, the contact centre and the school. She’s written letters to the judge. She gives a very good account of all abuse before leaving and since contact. She used to come home and challenge him about it by text, so we have a clear “paper” trail.

They say it all came from me.

There was one incident a few months back when DS didn’t want to go. DS ended up being tackled to the floor as he ran away, then dragged along the floor by his wrists, following an hour long screaming match.

I didn’t make him go that night, and received a court threat the next day.

What does your solicitor say, ilovemilton?

I worked with a man who's looney ex made up all sorts of lies about his behaviour. Cafcas saw through the lies and insisted on contact for the good of the child. If the lies had continued then residency would have been moved to the father. These rulings aren't made lightly,

Parents do alienate and clearly they have identified that the OP is alienating her DD.

OP if that isn't the case then you need to be particularly mindful that the court think you are. Therefore you need to be seen to comply with the spirit and obligation of any order whilst also collecting any evidence you can to demonstrate that any violence or behavioural issues. Keep logs of txt and phone calls. Do have cctv. I wouldn't recommend a diary for your DD as the above loony had her DD write a load of lies and it was harmful to the child

He says that ordinarily, it would be obey the order or return to court to vary it.

But since he texts DD saying she doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to, that is a written agreement, and the order states “any other agreement made in writing”.

So he doesn’t think it would go anywhere if he applied to court. But it would still cost me a bloody fortune as usual.

I worked with a man who's looney ex made up all sorts of lies about his behaviour. Cafcas saw through the lies and insisted on contact for the good of the child. I'm assuming that you were there at the time the alleged behaviour occurred? Or are you just taking his word for it that he never did anything wrong because you think he was a nice bloke?

It's such a coincidence that when children get to the age where they can start refusing to see one parent, it's always the 'looney ex' who has brainwashed them and never that the child has had enough of that parent's behaviour. My emotionally abusive and physically violent father, whose children were so scared of him that they had wet themselves in fear, stood in front of a Judge and convinced him that he was a wonderful father and it was his evil ex wife who had brain washed us. These rulings are made by people who are just as easily taken in as friends, family and colleagues. That's the whole thing of abusive people; if they were no good at hiding it, then their partners wouldn't marry them or have children with them.

OP, I stopped seeing my father at the age of eleven or twelve. I was very lucky in that the OW wanted his children to disappear, so she told him not to go back to court and he, thank God, didn't. He only went for joint custody in the first place to exercise the last little bit of control he had over my mum. Just stay strong, you've just got a few more years to go and it will all be over.

golden is that fact, or is that what the ex told you. The term " loony ex", is hardly professional or appropriate.

Exactly SnOt, is that the story he fed you, and like many 'professionals' believe it to be true. When in reality the 'loony ex', may well have been abused and manipulated by this person, but he won't tell you that, will he!

There was a police investigation that proved that he was innocent of the allegations she made as he had strong alibis for both times she alleged he hurt her. Including being at an event attended by bunch of police officers who could witness that the phone call to police was a pack of lies.

I also witnessed the bruises and wounds from her attacks on him.

But I fully accept that only the 2 participants in a relationship know the full story and that he may have done somethings wrong, but he definitely didn't do the specific things that she alleged.

I apologise if loony ex is offensive. I have no issues with exes in general, the one was extreme. She hugged his car and ultimately the police warned his new gf she was at risk from the ex

Oh right Golden, that sounds very extreme behaviour on her part, and its people like her that make it hard for women who are genuine victims of abuse to be believed in the courts and to be taken seriously.

Thing is tho, for every 1 man who is a victim of a 'looney ex' there are probably 10 women and 20 or 30 dcs who are subject to abuse because of a violent, abusive man. And the abuse becomes court approved so recounting the one incident you can think.of when there was a looney ex isn't actually that helpful or relevant.

You have only to read the relationships board on here. Or look at the statistics of women murdered because of violent dps/ex dps. Or even of dcs murdered by their dfs. The stats of women murdering dps and/or dcs in comparison will be minuscule.

It's about time that courts and cafcas started protecting the most vulnerable in our society. Not bowing down to the shite f4j spew out.

I totally agree Frouby, I am on a DV violence support group as a result of my friend who was as victim of DV, and the number of vulnerable women who have been subjected to DV, who are put through the wringer by the court is quite numerous. You don't find the men being treated as dreadfully by judges and CAFCASS. Some women have described it as like being abused all over again. Yes its state sanctioned child abuse. My friend has to send her ds 9 on contact, ex emotionally abuses and neglects ds on contact. Yet if my friend does not comply with contact, ds will be removed from her care. There are many like her, in her position, its awful.

Some men act so charming and nice in court, whereas the reality is totally different. The men don't necessarily want contact, they are using the court system and contact as another form of control towards their ex partner.

The professionals working in the family court system have to be on the ball and wise up to what is going on. Every judge and every CAFCASS officer needs to be DV trained and trained in coercive control.

The cafcas officer dealing with my case stated that our 'contact' book was emotive from both sides and I should try and take constructive criticism in the spirit it was intended.

The criticism included 'lose weight, then you can carry dd everywhere' (when he had forgotten her pushchair that I bought for the 3rd time running and I needed it to get her to nursery 1 mile away, I was a size 10/12), stop going out on a saturday so I could facilitate his ever changing contact requests (I was working), stop denying her treats so I could fund my savings (sweets. Because teeth. Savings for a deposit on rented property). And stop sending my family to deal with issues. (Because it was court approved that due to physical/sexual/emotional/financial abuse I was NC with him and my mum dealt with handovers).

The only information I ever put in the contact book was responses to his request for contact, medical information such as had calpol at 4pm, needs Abs 3 times a day or information from nursery etc.

Apparently the cafcas officer didnt have time to look through it but she could tell I was upset so surmised what was in it. Ffs.

I wasn’t even allowed to go no contact for handovers , since putting someone there who isn’t normally there teaches the children that something is wrong.

Ffs OP. The court system is shite.