to ask if anyone has been through family court where domestic abuse is involved?

[STANTER]

And would you mind sharing your experience with judges/CAFCASS/fact finding etc? I have a fact finding coming up and am absolutely terrified

Yes, as I am a social worker so have had to write reports and be at court. Do you have any questions that I may be able to help with?

Thanks @thevoice2019 - I was just wondering how a fact finding hearing usually goes. I hear so much bad stuff about abusive fathers getting unsupervised access,but so far the courts have been amazing. Social services were very briefly involved, again fantastic and said they thought I was safeguarding effectively. Even came to see me when I was anxious and told me I've done the right thing, commended my actions etc. CAFCASS have been brilliant. I just feel like it's a been too good to be true and that it's going to start going wrong. Do you have any experience with fact finding hearings?

Yes. Personally and professionally. It generally seems to be contact at all costs. Cafcass are biased towards fathers, social workers are more balanced. Abuse is often written off as parental alienation.

There has been some recent studies to back this up. How women lose residency to men they accuse of abuse. Sorry I cant be more hopeful

My ex swore, threatened to punch her face in and flipped over a table. The CAFCAS workee still thought it was a good idea to get me alone in a room with his solicitor to try and pressure me into allowing unsupervised contact. I wouldn't and luckily the judge agreed.

Yes. I didn't have a fact finding hearing though; they didn't care about his abuse of me (even though it was in front of our daughter/involving her via manipulation) so they didn't consider it relevant to the case.

He has unsupervised access (not that I was asking for otherwise, as I don't consider him a physical threat to her).

I was raped my my exh before I left him. I was manipulated by the Caffcass worker to speak to him face to face at court about access even though the police were in the middle of investigating the rape & ordered that I had to do handovers for access & communicate with him about things to do with ds by threatening that I would lose custody of ds if I didn't. The CPS did not choose to charge him with raping me, their reasoning was that I would not have communicated with someone who raped me.