There is a current CAO in place which was a result of my ex partner taking me to court for shared care of our daughter - I had always been primary carer, but she saw him regularly, until I had concerns about his abusive actions due to disclosures our daughter made to me. In light of his abusive treatment of me - verbal, physical and psychological during our 3 year relationship, I believed what my daughter had said, and at advice of SS, stopped overnight contact - it seemed to be this stressful time of parenting that he was losing his temper at and I felt our DD would be settled not to do overnights and wait for him to finish anger management course which he reluctantly went on.
She was far more settled and started sleeping through the night again when she was just doing overnights with me, and seeing him every weekend in the daytimes. I did want to have some weekends with her though especially as she was due to be starting school.
However Ex alleged that I made unilateral decision to move and said that I was obstructing contact - although he was seeing her every weekend and although he had agreed to me moving and was well informed about the move. This seemed to just be a reason to take the matter to court for him.
Cafcass said although there was a low level of abuse they recommended DD go to him 3 nights per week - which was a complete change to what she was used to, and she was just about to start school. I feel they were unfairly biased towards my ex and believed all the things he lied about to make me look bad, and ignored the fact that he had been saying upsetting things to DD throughout court case such as that Mummy was a liar, and certain things were Mummy's fault.
Although I initially straight away raised concerns straight away on C100 in response to his CAO application - to explain why I felt necessary to stop overnight contact - he didn't have any initial concerns, but then as the case went on and he thought he may not get what he wanted, he started saying he was concerned and accusing me of things, twisting things around.
This whole experience was very traumatic, to not feel I was believed or taken seriously...my lawyers were not very good I feel, they seemed to want me to just agree with him and said I can always bring it back to court if it doesn't work.
I agreed under immense pressure to av. 2.5 nights a week and decided to have a positive mindset about it for DD and hope that maybe ex had had some realisations about managing his anger, and hoped that one he got what he wanted he would stop saying negative things to DD about me, and things would maybe be more harmonious, I just wanted the court experience to be over and was under so much stress.
Contact was fine at 1 or 2 nights a week and I thought it was going well. Once it started to ramp up to the maximum schedule though, DD started to become incredibly clingy, have separation anxiety from me, would be incredibly emotional and have huge meltdowns and started having night terrors and nightmares again every night.
Co-parenting with him also started to become very difficult the more involvement we had with each other, the more contact etc by email text and contact book - he has used almost every issue to do with DD that he can - school lunch menus, school music lessons, drop offs and handovers, illnesses etc to put me down, make conflict, criticise almost every aspect of my parenting and decision making, subtly accusing me or blaming me for things he's actually done himself, chastising me & gaslight me - continuing psychological abuse. No matter how civil I am with him or positive or boundaried I try to be, he will not communicate honestly or respectfully. And snaps at me in front of DD at handovers. So I cannot co-parent with him sadly.
He has also broken the court order at least once and refused DD phone contact with me. He is being like how he was in our relationship - jekyll and hyde - super nice and then subtly nasty, demanding and controlling, it's been like a rollercoaster.
Then DD made more disclosures of him being abusive/losing him temper at her / frightening her etc. Ever since I brought this up with him, he has been even more difficult - pressuring me to go to mediation - asking for me to sit in a room with him - not shuttle, which is the only way I would consider mediation - /threatening to go back to court as he wants to now ask for more time with DD and wants to have bits of the court order removed/changed that he finds inconvenient (like arranging phone calls or Facetime with me for DD whilst she's with him).
Do I take the matter back to court and run the gauntlet of being painted as an alienating, obstructive, lying, bitter, jealous ex like he did before and that CAFCASS will believe him? Or do shuttle mediation, where he has already stated he is not willing to compromise on what he wants ? So he's using mediation to try and pressure me, not to try and compromise.
I am so scared of going back to court and having the same thing happen, and him being given more time with DD when she is not currently coping now and co-parenting is not working. This will damage her emotionally I feel. As well as his abusive temper explosions with her and being negative to her about Mummy, which she still cries about. She has also started making fun of me and when I ask her why she is treating me this way she says "Daddy makes fun of you all the time and I copy him because he's my Dad and he's older and bigger than me" (again this is him breaking the court order).
Any advice much appreciated. Sorry for the length of post.