I’ll try and keep this brief so it’s not too outing..I’ve been going through family court with an abusive ex for years. I’ve been advised by social work and solicitors to stop contact between my child and his father numerous times because of serious safeguarding concerns and to let ex take me to court for contact. The problem is that ex becomes angrier and angrier at me and the courts always still grant him contact no matter what he does. This then puts me and my child in an even more vulnerable situation as ex is like a loose canon.
The contact is always to start supervised at the centre for a brief period and then the court is quick to progress to unsupervised non residential contact and then overnights. The judges always want ex to have as much contact as possible despite all the concerns and a very young child being involved. My child doesn’t enjoy contact with their father however if I mention this in court I am immediately blamed by the judge as not encouraging my child or speaking negatively about the other parent and “poisoning” my child, which I have certainly never done.
This plays into my exes hand has he constantly tells the courts that he’s being alienated and makes up lie after lie about me. The scary thing is that sometimes the judges/court reporters believe him.
At the moment we’re waiting on a space at the centre… as usual I’m sure ex will go to centre for a few weeks and be dad of the year in front of supervisor. Problem is he is still the same person with the same problems and when it moves away from the centre it’s only a matter of time until contact ends in disaster once again.
So what I’m asking really is once it is deemed “safe” for contact to move away from contact centre by the courts should I just give ex whatever he wants? With ex it is his way or no way and he won’t settle on building up contact so I will be forced to use the court which has been traumatic so far. Yes my child won’t want as frequent contact as ex will demand but should I just agree to it anyway? Because I feel like it plays into exes hands using the court and in the end he gets what he wants anyway it just prolongs things. It causes serious stress and upset being dragged into court constantly and to sit there while my ex spews utter vitriol about me and the judge believes it with no evidence to back him up. Also my ex gets a kick out of using the courts to continue his abuse so maybe I need to just give him whatever he wants?