How to keep them safe??

[lonelypolarbear]

Hello everyone

Im hoping someone may have some advice please.

My husband and I separated approx 5 years ago and agreed we would co-parent our children 50% of the time each and this seemingly worked for a while, although there was occasional things said to me by our daughter (aged 12 at the time) where he would say inappropriate things, such as making idol threats about me, my family etc, saying he wanted to fight to the death with my new partner, that if they spent too much time with him then he would leave to live on a boat and theyd never see him again etc. Each time i would speak to him calmly and explain hes upsetting her and would promise to change, but each time he told her off that she'd got him in trouble and it was her fault.

Fast forward another year and our daughter is exasperated with keep being blamed for stuff hes doing wrong. He then decides to take class A hallucinogenic drugs and subsequently a few weeks later has a major mental health crisis which lands him in a rest house for a week to recover. During this time i take the children 100% of the time and we are back and forth to his house (which we both own) to get things for the children which they need for school etc. I start to clean the house each time I'm there as well as its disgusting. During this time i become suspicious and find drugs in a drawer and marijuana plants growing in the loft, my daughter also divulges that he regularly takes them round to his sisters house but she's not allowed to have a sleepover there as the sisters boyfriend is a drug dealer. Understandably I'm mortified, how could he put our children in this situation. Turns out our daughter has known about the drugs being grown in the loft for over a year but was too scared to say anything and he refers to himself in front of her as an 'urban ganja farmer'.

I remove all unsupervised contact, contacted my solicitor and they wrote to him to advise that due to serious safeguarding concerns, the children will remain with me and should he want to have contact with them in the meantime, he can use a contact centre, which i would happily pay half towards and if he wanted to discuss childcare beyond that, we would want clear drug tests as a starting point. He now had this letter for 5 weeks and has done nothing, apart from some messaging and occasional phone calls to the children. My daughter didnt want to speak with him and only recently decided to open up lines of communication again, but boy has that caused chaos. When asked why he hasnt arranged contact, he told her that why should he, hes waiting to see how much the kids want to see him and if theyre willing to break my rules to get to see him. When asked about taking class a drugs, his answer to our 13 year old was 'i dont know why she's (me) getting so uptight about them, its DMT, its a naturally occurring thing in the human body so shouldn't be illegal'. (ps ive googled and whilst there is reason to believe this could be true, there is zero evidence). So this grown man is telling our 13 year old that its okay to take illegal class a drugs, if you happen to believe something different. She has been a crying mess since speaking to him, shes stroppy as well and confused as he is also telling her that i've stopped contact because i dont want them seeing family, which is utter tosh, its 100% about the drugs and the emotional abuse hes been putting her through for the past 2 years.

Hes now told our daughter he has arranged the first drug test, and now I'm terrified hes going to be after going back to 50/50 childcare split. I dearly hope he has stopped smoking weed, taking any kind of drugs, growing them etc for his own good, let alone the children, but even if he has, I do not want someone with this kind of attitude towards drugs having an input on impressionable minds., and i dont for one second believe he wont be growing them somewhere, even if it isnt at the house. We have really clever children, who we've worked really hard with for them to reach their potential and they're failing due to his poor decisions.

Has anyone got any advice on what path to take please??

Do i apply to the court for a consent order or do i let him take me to court?? I'm aware the longer they're with me then the less likely a judge is to order it to go back to how it was

Not a solicitor/lawyer, and I think as you already have one involved they're probably the best person to ask this question rather than MN but personally I wouldn't be preemptively going to court - I'd continue to reiterate the offer that you have on the table for him and focus really on supporting your kids since this must be really difficult for them emotionally.

Men like this tend to be all talk and no action in my experience, it's very easy and cheap (in terms of money and time) to throw threats around about court and 50:50 and getting the kids taken off you and everything else but quite hard work and expensive actually going through with the legal process. If and when he gets his act together to apply it will take quite a lot of time to go through the court and your DD certainly and possibly your other child too (you don't mention their age) will be old enough to have their views taken very seriously too - if they don't want to have overnight stays or 50:50 the court is usually quite reluctant to try and force a teenager into it particularly if they have a good reason why not (as opposed to just mistaken loyalties to one parent over another for instance).

The only thing I would say is that contact centres IME are quite depressing places for older children/teens and it's not a very natural or fun interaction for them (younger children it can be OK as there's toys and things and the contact supervisors can be fairly unobtrusive, but an older kid or teen will totally notice their presence and can feel quite uncomfortable like they're the one being monitored rather than their parent) - I totally 100% get why you don't want them going to his house for contact with the issues you mention, but is there any other alternative that is still safe but perhaps a bit lower key way they can have contact - e.g. how would you and they feel about contact not being formally supervised but in a public place - can he take them for coffee or lunch or to do an activity for instance? Or does he have wider family you would trust to 'supervise' and be present for contact, can they do a monthly lunch at grandparents house for instance or with any aunts/uncles/cousins?

This is purely my personal opinion but my own experience with teenagers and difficult family dynamics is that it can feel as though the best way to protect them is to totally cut them off from the 'bad' parent and get as much separation as possible, but that can mean the young person kind of glamourises the absent parent/looks back with rose tinted glasses at happier times or gives credence to the narrative the absent parent will want to push, e.g. that they were 'forbidden' by the evil/selfish other parent from seeing them and if only they were given the chance they would have been the best parent in the world. Hard as it is for a young person to have to face up to the truth that their parent has their own troubles or prioritises other things over being a good parent to them I think it probably is better that that happens gradually and organically over time than that they have a long separation and then perhaps meet again and are suddenly shocked by the reality.

I'm not suggesting overnights or 50:50 residence or anything like that but if it can be managed that in their own time and at their own pace and in a safe way of course they do see their Dad at least occasionally, I think that would be for the best. It's so hard these days with devices and constant communications but it would be good to think through a plan with them about what they'd like in terms of indirect/phone/message contact too - I don't think it's a great thing if their Dad can't be trusted to not guilt trip or involve them in what ought to be an adult contact that he effectively has 24/7 access to messaging/calling them - obviously it's not really practical or sensible to block him entirely either but I wonder if he'd agree to using one form of messaging platform only and then they could make their own decisions on when/how often they want to read his messages? I think they might need some counselling/therapeutic help with all this as well if you can manage to access something like that for them?