Rebecca Minnock - on the run with child after court battle

[BreakingDad77]

Is this one of those cases we wont get to the bottom of as to whether she is someone with MH problems or scheming father driving her to them?

Yes,

nobody would question the judgement if the genders were reveresed.

Shock Horror, abusive bitch, it could never be.

Far more common that the 'mumsnet collective' would ever accept.

I suspect a few media appearances will be on the cards. At least a morning chat show. But hopefully it won't happen. I don't think the child should have been on TV either.

RM, her family and her friends seem to think that they are taking part in a Jeremy Kyle style trial by public opinion, where you get to have lots of lovely, exciting drama and the only consequences are Jezza getting shouty and Graham being a bit patronising.
Unfortunately their delusions are hugely toxic to everyone they impact. RM and her cohort who will end up with criminal records. The dad who is branded an abuser and will face a lifetime of "there's no smoke...". But mostly a child who is being denied the chance to grow up secure in the knowledge that his parents love and support him in every way.

She is back in court on Monday - will be interested to see what happens. the police are saying its a matter for the family courts. If the grandmother got 10 days and her partner 28, the Judge must be looking at a custodial sentence for her.

To have your child filmed in the way she has allowed is just awful. Why on earth is that necessary? I just hope he is too little to remember much of this - but of course the fact that his mother feels this way about his father is certainly going to leave a mark.

I thought the whole last day wity her ds, spent in the company of DM reporters was odd, all I can think is she wanted pictures?

Really???? you are so keen to see her behaviour in the best possible light you think that whole circus was to get some lovely pictures for her photo album??

Really???

Good Lord.

I will be very interested to see what the judge says about a parent who would expose their child in this way. For me, it just underlines that she doesn't understand how abusive her behaviour is.

And why should she, when so many are apparently happy to cheer her on as just displaying that good old primary carer motherly instinct.

The outcome of the case does makes me question whether the reporting restrictions should have been lifted. Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing and I can completely see why HHJ Wildblood did. However, would RM have come forward anyway? She only got from Bristol to Oxford in that 17 days.

Also, the publicity appears to have been part of her family's plan and played into her hands. She may have come forward earlier if there was no media circus about her and Ethan.

Finally, this genie cannot now be put in the bottle. The remainder of this case will in one way or another be public. Will RM try and talk to the press before/after each hearing? You can see in 8 years time a Daily Mail 'sad face' story " I wasn't allowed to see my son on his first day of secondary school" story. Not front page news but an endless drip drip. I know they could impose reporting restrictions/injunctions on her speaking to the press but I can imgine she will try and exploit those/go online where they are unpolicable.

I work in the family courts and have a huge amount of time and respect for Lucy Reed and her Transparency project but I'm not sure that this case is evidence in its support.

What you say makes a lot of sense BUT don't you think that a failure to lift reporting restrictions would have lead to the worst case scenario?

i.e. RM and her supporters would have continued to say whatever they liked about the court process and the information about what had actually happened could not be referred to. The reason proceedings are confidential is to protect children from precisely this kind of horrible situation - BUT I imagine RM and her family would have carried on in the way they had regardless as they have already shown they have no respect for the court or its orders (and two have gone to prison as a consequence for that)

I am continually getting activists who say to vulnerable parents - you won't be allowed to see the evidence against you, the court makes decisions on hearsay alone, etc, etc, - all utter crap.

But as this thread has quite chillingly show, there are people who are quite prepared to ignore the facts in front of them, rather than face any challenge to their world view.

I know we can't make much of a dent with these people, but its the others on the fringes I hope we can reach, who aren't quite sure what to believe.

The TP may not be able to achieve its aims - but I can't believe that doing nothing is an option now. I think the more openness and discussion we can have the better - its just an enormous shame that a 3 year old child has to be dragged into this mess.

But the person who chose to do that was his mother. No one else. That she chose to spend her last day of 'freedom' parading her son to the media must be something very difficult for even her most diehard supporters to explain away as illustration of her excellent use of that primary carer intuition.

They need to come down on her like a tonne of bricks, this was just the latest in a long time of tantrums about not getting her own way. She comes over like a three year not wanting to share her toy, albeit her favourite toy. She forgets that this is a man she chose to have a child with, a relationship with. Her behaviour we know about makes me question what being in a relationship with her must have been like.

The judge in this case now has a very tricky path to tred, he won't want to go easy and open the gates to others thinking they can go down this route, false allergation followed by false allegation followed by taking off.

I have very little sympathy for someone who behaves the way she has. She has brought this all on herself.

I can believe, but wish it wasn't so, the general consensus she's a mum she's the best to look after for him. The people here blindly supporting mum really need to go off and read some of the toxic parent and MIL threads on here. Not all women make the best parents. You only have to see the number of different posters on those threads to know that bad parenting by either parent isn't that rare.

I wish the dad all the best in parenting his son from now.

I absolutely agree that she should not benefit in any way from this latest escapade. She comes over as a woman determined to get her own way. And shows a remarkable lack of judgement by appearing on TV with her child. Why did the little boy have to be on TV. He didn't. It was a publicity stunt to get sympathy and support for her 'cause'. I feel sorry for the Dad up against this ruthless determination of somebody that they will get what they want or else.

Isn't the transparency project more likely to be effective if most/all hearings are made public but kept anonymous? Wouldn't that challenge the "they do what they like attitude?". I think expecting the project to be seen as successful or not based on (A) one case and (B) the type of people that will always go with the "ah, but what about..." response is doing it a disservice.

Sorry, I don't understand your comment. the TP is not about this one case. It's about improving understanding of the family courts generally. All ways that this can be done are up for discussion.

That poor little boy. I sincerely hope some or other nitwit celebrity will do something stupid in the next day or so to drive this grim business out of the headlines so the kid has a chance to get settled down.

That's one quite solid argument for giving her 28 days in custody - hopefully then the Mail will get bored and move on to the next shiny thing dangled in front of it.

I think my concern is that if the press had not been allowed to publish the child's name and (crucially) photographs of the family there would not have been anything like the current level of media interest and RM and E would have been found anyway. There were appeals by the police prior to the reporting restrictions being lifted but they attracted limited local publicity only (as they were 'fears for missing mother' (who can't be named) type reports).

RM would have continued to have a distorted view of reality which her supporters follow with recourse to critical analysis or logic. No amount of reporting / lack of it would change that.

In addition, and obviously, the DM could not have published that video. Obviously the primary blame for that video lies with RM (and it shows, if there was any doubt, her very limited emotional insight).

I am on the fence about this so much so that it hurts . I don't necessarily think the 'precedent' set by this case is one to be followed.

People have expressed concern on here about Ethan being able to access all this online when he's older.

I said up thread a friend of mine had his daughter abducted 7 years ago now. I just put her name into google and its all still there. She's 12 or 13 now and could easily find it. :(

Although that is pretty awful, sadly I think that will be the least of his worries, unless his mother can start allowing him to have a relationship with his dad, he is going to lose at least one of his parents, growing up.

The mother has taken to Facebook,

"That heart breaking moment when you see that the little seed your baby planted weeks and weeks ago has finally started to grow, and he's not here to see it.
To say I'm devastated is an understatement, I have today read all the support from all of you and am speechless.
I am preying that this case gets re looked at properly and the judge can see that my son belongs with his mama who absolutely loves him to bits.
Think you all know how much I adore Ethan.
Two years of hell, but would do it over and over if it meant he was safe with me. Xx"

This really is not going to end well for her is it?

It won't end well for any of them, there's the tragedy of it. There are never any winners in this kind of situation. The child is highly unlikely to have any kind of healthy relationship with his own mother, who is apparently going to continue to believe that what she is doing is just fine and dandy.

But she can't be forced out of her delusions. All that the state can do is protect her son from the worst of them; i.e. permit only supervised contact if she cannot stop herself making accusations about his father.

And if she carries on like this, even the supervised contact may have to come to an end. What an almighty shame. But I certainly don't think she should be permitted or enabled to do this and I am horrified at this notion (from some) that being a mother is a get out of jail free card for all kinds of emotional stupidity.

This is from the Facebook group

•Do these people not understand the bond between a mother and child? A mother does not go through the trials of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding to just be able to let their child go. Mother/child is a strong inherent bond and no court in the land should have the power to undermine that. Katie Hopkins wrote a great piece supporting Rebecca in The Sun yesterday. I hope Rebecca's desperate attempt will bring some sense to those powers that be•

Well - if Katie Hopkins thinks its all ok, I guess there is nothing more for any of us to say. Maybe Katie Hopkins should just make all the decisions in family courts from now on, give the neighbours a bit of a rest.

If she continues with her victim script and in the way she behaved being interviewed in front of her son, then I would agree that even supervised contact would be unable to prevent her continuing to emotionally and psychologically abuse him.

I agree that it is a tragedy for the son.

What shocks but doesn't really surprise me is the amount of support she has, mostly just for being a mother, which only seems to be encouraging her behaviour.

Whereas the father's pain and suffering in having to fight against losing his son isn't really being highlighted in the media.

Some more judgements.

www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/roger-williams-v-rebecca-minnock-and-ethan-freeman-williams-2-judgments/