I had my first interview with CAFCASS on Friday and some of the comments the officer made have really upset me. I left my husband after realising our relationship was very unhealthy and that a lot of his behaviour was both emotionally and financially abusive. I have been in contact with Women’s aid and I am doing the freedom programme. Both of these have backed up that my husband was/is controlling and manipulative. There has been no violence either sexual or physical, but he did threaten me and accused me of poisoning him. The complicated part is that we live on the south coast, we’ve been here less than two years and I want to return to Scotland where I am from and where we all lived prior to the move, which I feel he manipulated me into. He got a prohibited steps order to stop me from taking the kids to Scotland and wants us to stay here where I have no support network. So we are in court over this. I am not denying him contact, I want them to have a relationship but I just want to go home. Anyway the Cafcass officer really interrogated me on the abuse and told me on ‘the spectrum of abuse you are way down here’, basically minimising the abuse, she made me feel like a silly little girl throwing accusations around. She said I need to be more assertive in life and that I shouldn’t use avoidance as a coping meathod in life. I think the avoidance thing was because she asked me what happen when I challenged my husband about things like me getting a job, going to college, or just generally disagreeing with him, I said I was often too scared of his reaction to push things too far, as he would get very agngry with me, aggressive and look like he would explode. I didn’t want to find out what would happen if he did explode so I usually backed down. I felt like because I couldn’t give her an example of his shouting obscenities at me every day that she didn’t take me seriously. She also said she felt my husband has a genuine inability to understand other people’s points of view, and she felt there was no malicious intent in his actions. The police said the same thing. So if his actions had been malicious that would be more serious, but surely the impact on me was the same, intentional or not?
Sorry for the long post, I’m just wondering if this is normal? Has anyone else had this experience? I mean how much abuse is too much? Just because it was at the lower end does that make it ok? I’m wondering if I should make a complaint about her. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.