How do you cope when the father of your child is a truly evil person?

[Pinky99]

Hi everyone,

my young daughter has recently started seeing her father. He comes to my home once a week and we all spend a day together. He and I split up when I was 2 months pregnant so this is really her first experience of him. He is a charming and intelligent man and she is currently delighting in her new relationship with him. But he is also an extremely duplicitous character with a psychopathic personality. He loves no one, but pretends he does, as this makes controlling them a lot easier.

I can assure you I am not exaggerating when I call him 'evil'. But as I know he tries to find me on various social media, I'm not going to give any specific details.

Though I have welcomed contact from him, as I want my daughter to have a relationship with her father so she feels 'normal and like all the other boys and girls', I struggle to keep the friendly smile on my face when we see him. To put it simply, he makes my skin crawl and I struggle to breathe properly in his company.

I would NEVER leave my daughter alone with him, or have someone else supervise the meetings. Anyhow, he would never agree to a contact centre.

I just really want some support from those of you in a similar situation and to hear how on earth you cope with it ???

My x is a narcissist, and a blamer. He never thinks about how his own behaviour has brought about an outcome. ie, he was every type of abusive you can think of and yet hates me for leaving. Move far enough away that your daughter has a face to the name Daddy but not much more. I don't want my children being too influenced by their father either as he is so self-pitying and manipulative. He has a huge ego and a low self-esteem. I am glad that he sees them occasionally and that's it.

When she was 4 she asked about her dad, I told her that we had to leave him because he wasn't a safe person to be around. At the time she was worried that he might find us but I reassured her that wouldn't be possible. She is a teenager now and has never shown much interest about him since then. I haven't told her about the abuse case but if she showed interest more interest then I would have to let her know.

I'll never forget the last time my ex collected our kids (February), the kids ran off to the car all excited, I stood at my front door, he leaned towards me and whispered "You should probably consider suicide right about now, whilst they arent here, its for the best" Thats EVIL!

IME children without dads grow up perfectly happy. It will be much less disruptive for your DD if you break contact with her father now, before she is too emotionally involved and he can start to mess her up. Could you tell her a version of the truth, such as he is ill and so it is difficult for him to spend time with other people. She will very soon forget him. You can explain in more detail when she is older.

I really wouldn't start lying to your daughter - that way resentment and arguments about trust lie.

Of course children can grow up fine without Dads, or even with rubbish Dads but unless there is any legal reason why there should be no contact (in which case you can get the courts to support you) then if the father is actually reaching out for contact then I think you are best of facilitating that contact (without allowing yourself to be manipulated) however hard that is.

It sounds as though the Dad may be ill in the sense of being psychopathic or whatever? Being unable to care for other people or empathise with them isn't normal.
What will happen if the OP breaks contact? If he is likely to apply to the courts for access, then I would get advice on what he would be likely to achieve and then offer a compromise option. A whole day with both the child and the OP every week is not sustainable in the circs, surely. It would hang over the family for the rest of the DD's childhood. To avoid that, I would happily move to the other end of the country. He won't want to visit weekly then. But is there a risk he could ask the courts to have holiday visits from DD?

psychopathic personality needs to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist for it to hold any weight in a court.

there needs to be hard evidence.

what is clear is contact with mum and child just isn't working for mum.

the danger to child of dad /child contact needs to be fully assessed and judged to be potentially harmful for court to order supervised contact. severe MH issues could qualify but op saying "he is psychopathic" doesn't stand up in court without evidence.

Mild, unproven allegations lead to supervised contact on a regular basis. Sad really because contact centres aren't really places you want your children to be.
Either way, supervised contact is usually a short term solution, often a matter of weeks before it is moved to unsupervised.

Definitely go for a contact centre if he is using contact as a way of getting to you. He'll probably back off because he won't want any form of supervision and won't have access to you. Have a similar ex unfortunately. :(

Do any of you realise that contact centers are usually very short term steps where everything is geared towards unsupervised?

And unless you have evidence or have experanced actual harm then in all likelyhood walking into a court and asking for supervised will not work even if it does it will usually be for about 6 months and then he gets unsupervised.

op take actual real legal advice from someone that you can give the whole situation to and be incredibly cautious about changing the steps you know are safe without professional advice

6 months is a long time too - courts like you to be out of them pretty quickly. Either the parent is a real risk and contact is not suitable or it isn't and they don't need to be supervised. The courts don't teach people how to get better at being a parent.