caffcass recomends contact with abusive dad

[kittycat68]

cafacass have recomended contact for my children with their dad whom we left due to abuse. they have refused to see him for the last 18months, ex went to court as self litigant for enforcment order, kids 10 and 15 and are petrified of him they have told cafcass of the abuse but the report says he how works in a SEN school and as there is no recenet abuse he should be now having over night contact. what do i do they dont want anything to do with him cafcass seem more inclined to belive he has changed than to listening to the children , 20 years of abuse now he has changed i dont think so! help.

[Fluffyone]

Well, yes, but if that is a serious possibility then I think a representative from Mumnet should meet with OP and her solicitor first. She says that Cafcass have recommended contact, not that they are attempting to physically force it to happen. I'd like to know that the wishes of youngsters of that age are really going to be ignored before writing to an MP etc.

[SolidGoldBrass]

At the moment it seems (please do correct me if I'm wrong OP) that Cafcass have made a recommendation and there is not yet a court order for contact. So a court order might not be made.
I am not making light of the OP's distress, it's horrible to get an official letter implying strongly that you are going to have to submit to something awful - but given that the DC do not wish to see the abuser, and there is evidence on record of abuse, her case may be stronger or be seen as stronger by the judge.

[scurryfunge]

How is he working in an SEN school? How can he have passed CRB checks? Has he never been investigated for violent offences?...your post suggests he has. If you have not reported the violence before to the Police, then do so now.

[SirBoobAlot]

No advice but just wanted to say I am absolutely disgusted with how you're being treated I hope they system starts to work better soon for you and your DCs.

[GypsyMoth]

parent alienation that he is claiming,is NOT recognised in this country....so dont worry about that

[kittycat68]

thanks everyone for your comments, i relaise i am not the only one going through all this, have managed yeaterday to finally get a socail woker involved. i am so drained and exhausted from all this i would love to just pick the kids up and run but its not paractical with three kids two with SEN I did ask the court for suppervised contact last time and the judge said i do not have to read this file to see whats going on here ( had different judge than before) i do not see the need for a contact centre! got cafcass coming again today in an attempt try to encourage the childen to go for contact by a family worker! Kids really angry saying how many times do we have to tell these people we dont want contact. i cant afford to go to final hearing either as its two days of court i feel like just giving him the kids and disappearing i cant take much more. will try some of the suggestions though will try anything!

[EcoMouse]

ILove, I know a family where parental alienation was the reason cited for placing a child with their father - when he applied for contact he was eventually given residency.

I sat with the mother the day the step father and child went to meet with the childs father and CAFCASS officer, who forced the child into her fathers car- very much against her and everyone elses wishes.

The child was returned to her mother when it became clear that yes, this man was indeed a paedophile who did abuse his daughter and that all the child and her mother had said before was probably true.

Anyone up against the sheer ignorance and arrogance of CAFCASS, please fight if you know they are wrong.

[tartyhighheels]

i am in a similar situation. fight like fuck!

ask for a pysch assesment and have a risk assesment done too and buy some time....

get in touch with social services and ask for them to be referred for counselling too as this has helped my dds a great deal

mostly, i feel so sorry for you, this is horrible and unfair and makes no sense at all - it happens to a lot of families and all you can do is keep on fighting

we are 3 years in and he hasn't seen them for 2 years now, they don't want to see him but still i am in court, jumping through hoops to try to help my girls

[tartyhighheels]

Anyone up against the sheer ignorance and arrogance of CAFCASS, please fight if you know they are wrong.

hear hear

[SolidGoldBrass]

TBH I think that an insistence on dragging the XP through the courts time and time again for unsupervised, overnight etc contact should actually be recognised as an abuse red flag. Because if you are an innocent, maligned parent not getting contact, you should be able to get your head round the fact that you are causing your DC distress by harassing their custodial parent to this extent, that even if they have been misled they have a right not to see you if they don't want to, and the best and kindest way to proceed would be to ask if you can send them letters or at least leave letters to them with a third party that they can seek out when they are older.
Sometimes, even if you are in the right, the kinder, wiser thing to do is to back off and leave your DC in peace. Men (and itls usually men) with a demonstrated and proven track record of abuse who keep pushing for contact are invariably doing so in order to continue abusing either the DC or their mother.

[Tanga]

Can i just make sure I've understood what you've said, SGB? That all men who have to apply to court for access to their children are abusive, because even if they are entirely innocent (and consequently the mother must have falsely accused them, and have brainwashed the children to such an extent that they will repeat the lies to others) then somehow the father is still abusive because they should know not to upset the abusive mother and should back down and leave the children in her care? Do you understand that this would leave very vulnerable children to be abused unchecked? Not to mention that the children would be deprived of a relationship with their Dad because of spite?

I am no supporter of CAFCASS, trust me, but what you are saying is deeply offensive. Would you even give brain room to the notion that all mothers who resist contact are spiteful harpies and that refusing to comply with court orders should be an abuse red flag?

[pigletmania]

This has made me so angry on your behalf op, Cafcass as i read is to act in the childs best interests in family court proceedings, no they dont. By making children do somthing that they do not want to do, and for trying to send the children in this case into the arms of an abusive and violent man. Whatever happened to the childrens act! You have to fight and your children have to keep refusing dont give up please.

[kittycat68]

cafcas worker just left, 5th one in the last 12 months! children said agian they want no contact whatso ever with ex p,seemed toally shocked by some of the stuff she was told about about. Do these people never read the case files. Told me to report him to the court for harrassment! said she would see about getting the kids some conselling but i wont count my chickens. said she was going to speak to ex p shortly but i know how convincing he can be so .....
i know some men are great dads to their kids but these people seem to think that he may have changed? how? i had to put up with it for 20 years before i finally got away he has nt been for any councilling just denies it all, when will it end for us. we just want to get on with our lives and be happy .

[SolidGoldBrass]

Tanga: Sorry, I didn't word that very well - what I mean is, that when there is a record of abuse, the man who is launching court actions to go straight to overnight unsupervised contact should be red-flagged - a decent man unfairly accused should be totally accepting of supervised contact, not pushing for more (because with supervised contact he is getting to SEE HIS DC).

[itsmeitsmeolord]

Play him at his own game.

1. Write to him via his solicitor. It must be non-confrontational but factual.

State something like; "due to the abuse suffered by DS15 on x date witnessed by x etc etc the children are at present unwilling and unable to cope with overnight contact.
Furthermore, due to the long period of no contact it would not be in the childrens best interests to insist upon a high level of intense contact straight away.
Therefore, I must insist on a child-focused approach to reinstating contact.
I propose 6 months of letterbox contact where you will write to the children once a fortnight.
If this goes well we can add a period of letterbox contact with a weekly phone call again for 6 months.

As long as there are no ill effects for the children we shall then move to fortnightly contact at a contact centre for a period of six months.

At the end of this program I would expect all parties to be in a better position to assess how contact can move forward in the future without further need for the courts involvement."

The whole point is to drag it out as long as possible whilst making sure that you come across as reasonable and child-centred.
Your ex will not have the staying power or the resources to continue to fight through the courts for the next three years ish.
By that time, the 15 yr old will be 18, so no longer considered a minor.

Have you not been advised to request a section 7 report yet?
Also, are there any police reports/witness statements to back you up?

[kittycat68]

whats a section 7 report? solicitor not mentioned this. have a few police reports but last one in 2008 when came at me with a knife and got a non mol put back into place but as i was not injured and only the children for witnesses he denied it and they said they could do nothing but i did get the non mol at court. also have some medical reports trouble is no independant witnesses to to abuse only the children when he abused bthe kids again it was in his own home so again neither police or socail services would get involved despite all the bruises and again he denied it.

[helpme01]

hi to every one i am new to this site
i have been fighting for my son for 6yrs now i have tryed every thing from abuse from his dad drink and drugs whitch he failed.i changed my name by getting marriedand moved it stopped for 1yr we now have 3 children and because i got a letter from my doctors about my 4th baby (baby billy)he had heart probs whitch were picked up in his 20 week scan so we were going to be in great ormond street hosoital but at 34 weeks preg on the 8 th december 2009 my baby boy past away inside me and was still born we berried him on 21st december my oldest son who is 10yrs now has bean through so much and now yesterday we get a court order through saying that i have to go to caffcass so this monster that call's him self a dad wants to see him my husband is so scared he is going to lose another child he love him to bit's and vise versa the caffcass are going to ask him if he wants to see his dad i and my husband have both spoke to my son and explained every thing we are not aloud to talk bad about him but my son still does not want to see him and looking at some of the comments on here him saying no to seeing his dad still does'nt matter but i am not going to drag him there when he does'nt want to go he says he has got a dad and a family here
please help me what do i do

[kittycat68]

i think most of these judges need to get a grip of the real world, thanks to everyone for all your advice feel better today but it gets on top of you and as i have always given into xp before he seems to think he only has to keep it going long enough for me to crack and i hope i dont!

[nighbynight]

helpme - have you got a good solicitor?
Do you keep evidence of things like drinking, eg keeping a diary of when your ex has contact, whether he was drunk when he visited or phoned etc.

OP - if the court rules that the children should go, it is in the children's hands. My children are also scared of their father. Dd1 however, flatly refused to visit him when she was 11. She made this view absolutely plain to everyone she spoke to, and also the reasons why (violence etc).
she was listened to.
I am that she had to take a stand at such a young age, but also proud of her that she did.

[shorty33]

im in a 14 month long resident battle to stop my ex from full custody. e has a secret baby and our child is my only child - cant av anymore. e walked out 08. went through a cafcass report ova a yr ago and coming close to the final hearing the ex had allegations against our child so cafcass passed their concerns to social services who are now doing the s7 report. My childs and my own medical reports (as far back from when I was born) were ordered by the judge and used against me to try and prove im mentally unstable (which ex is claiming). Its all very messy and ive still got another 3 months to go before to final hearing (just discovered im gunna be cross-examined in court). Ive learned the hard way throughout this court case but my child is worth the fight. Any adivce i can give any1 just give me a shout.

[kittycat68]

just thought i would come back here to you. back at court monday! after another cafcass report. they are now saying we need to go to parenting classes! my kids still refusing to go to contact told cafcass they are frightened of him seem him beeing voilent to me and each other! same old thing they speak up and no one is hearing them. he turned up at school a couple of weeks ago and told staff that he had my permission to collect one child to take them to live with him 100 miles away! school called me and i had to go up there he said the ds had called him and told him i was being mean and nasty and i had said ds could go live with his dad! a week later turned up at the house demanding ds children hiding upstairs petrified took two weeks to get dd into her own bed again as she was affraid he would break into the house again! womens aid also spoke to caffcas told them what had been going on school also complained to caffcass about him as well! ds refused to go to school after he turned up there was so worried that he would come back gp said it was stress!bloody courts seems to promote contact with fathers is best for the child at all costs seems his rights are worht more than the childrens.

[cestlavielife]

hope you get a good judge who will listen to the dcs... that could make all the difference.

it is a recommendation at this stage...

make sure you record everything and also call polcie if he at door demanding the dcs and they dontwant to go. eg he comes, they say no - he refuses to leave...

make sure dcs know they can call 999 from his place if they scared.

if he puts on victim-face then you have to play game -as others said, get it in writing that cafcass state he is not a risk to them...

put forward a proposal for very gradual increase n contact, definitely not going overnight straight off, try and drag it out...

the working with SEN kids etc - my exP did that too- is like a conscious plan to look good...

[Dollytwat]

Kittycat I do feel for you and it sounds as though you don't have Cafcass as a support. The parenting course, I mentioned in much earler posts, is a standard thing now, they make you both do it. Just go, you can't refuse, it will not help you in any way, but at least they can't send you on it again.

As I said nefore, my Cafcass officer seemed to be well versed in children voting with their feet, and at 15 I'm not sure any court will want to impose their view. At 15 you cannot make a child see a parent they don't wnat to. Perhaps it's easier for that child to just say they have other plans, doing other things, studying: easier for dad to undrestand anyway.

You know this is about control, that's what I"m up against. I hoped that my exh would get fed up. I hoped he would jsut give up, but he's on legal aid so why would he?

Keep fighting, keep asking for reports, and when you get a cafacss officer you trust, insist that they work on your case.

To put it into perspective for you, my exh COULD have had contact with the boys this weekend at his mums (supervised), before the final heaing next week, but he refused. It's not about contact with the kids it's about control over you.

[kittycat68]

i tell you its put me off men for life i will never get involved again i wouldnt trust my judgement and my kids sure dont need any more stress. i forgot to mention in the above post that cafcass also recommended a family assistance order with setting up some counselling for the children in the hope to promte contact with thier dad. i am pleased thier going to get some help just hope its not based around trying to justifiy his actions and then tell them they should go for contact. oldest is 16 this year so he has nt got to deal with his dad after that but really concerned for ds 10, hope its just normal couselling that will help then resolve some of there issues and make them feel happier inside and less streseed out

[kittycat68]

anyone else had a assistance order? advice please