Would you consider this an admission?

[Herewegoagain19891]

So at our first hearing for a cao for our 19 month old DD exp stated that some of the incidents I had listed did happen (all against our dd, from shouting abuse at her, threatening her, dropping her in coffee the list goes on) but that I dramatised it and denies being abusive. Would you consider this to be an admission?

The only answer to that that I can see is that if a person does not see that as being abusive behaviour it is even more dangerous to the victim.

Perhaps he could be asked when behaviour does become abusive or what would be abusive.

How the hell did her 'drop her in coffee'?

Everything khione says. Dropping her in coffee?? Was she burned badly?!

Luckily no, she wasn’t burnt as the coffee was warm but she was scared and had a bruise. So the story I am told, baring in mind I was in another room, he was sat on the sofa with her and she fell off into the coffee. I suspect he either left her unattended and she rolled off or wasn’t supporting her and she fell into it. All very neglectful and emotionally abusive, he told her to ‘shut up you p*ki’, yes you read that correctly. He pretty much sees abuse as only is you batter someone, his words. Also calls manipulation and gaslighting overused buzz words.

Reason I ask is because the courts I believe are meant to note when admissions have been made however they still have told exp denies abuse. Although I guess some may say this is correct as he does deny abuse but I would have still thought the fact he has said yes these happened it would be recorded. Or at the very least they’d order a finding of fact hearing.

I would say he has agreed the incidents occurred but doesn't see them as abusive and won't be accountable.

🤷‍♀️. I've not been in the situation. But wish you lots of luck that the systems helps to keep you and your dd safe.

So i'm not a lawyer but I went from the same sort of thing from your ex's side and had spoken to a lawyer and got advice.

We had to send each other a list of claims. Basically you have three options on how to respond to a claim. Yes I did it, No that never happened, Yes that happened but not how X claims it happened.

So he has basically gone for option 3. This isn't an admission of guilt of abuse. For example if you say, for arguments sake, he was annoyed at her noisy toy and broke it and she cried. He could say that he was annoyed at it and got up to move to the other room for some quiet time but accident tripped on the toy and broke it, and then consoled DD.

That's probably a bad example but you can see that he's admitting the incident happened, but that it's not happened how you said and thus isn't abuse.

So it really depends on what he's saying happened rather than if he agrees something happened.

In the coffee incident he could say DD wriggled out of his grasp awkwardly and it was an accident. That's not child abuse. (although presumably after enough incidents it becomes abuse? I don't know) The judge in court told me that abuse is specifically actions taken to purposefully harm. So accidents don't count although im sure if you have an accident every day the court will look at that badly.

Does that help at all? I'd recommend speaking to a lawyer even if you can't afford to get them to represent you in court. Spending an hour or two sitting down with you and putting you at ease, setting you on the right track and looking over your documents before you finalise them is just extremely helpful.

@unicornsarereal72, thank you, he is a nightmare and constantly bullying me.

@FatherB, thank you, you maybe right however he didn’t comment on each individual allegation. I sent the court in total 24 incidents ranging from the coffee situation which was part of multiple incidents where he left dd unattended, unsupported or in dangerous situations (Cafcass called it physical neglect as opposed to abuse). To emotional abuse I.e. shouting at dd telling her to ‘shut up p*ki’, threatening to slap her unless she shut up, calling her a little shit, scaring her while in the bath and then splashing water in her face when she started crying then walked off laughing, sexual assault and harassment against myself in front of dd. The list goes on. But he just said that some of them happened, although In his own words I dramatised them, most likely the ones we had discussed via text, about the name calling and threatening to slap her.. oh and threatening to make dd an orphan by pushing me down the stairs.

The reason I ask is because obviously the court hasn’t documented that he said these things did happen, and my understanding is if events are disputed then there should be a finding of fact hearing, but this hasn’t been done. They aren’t even ordering a section 7 report to be done because of covid 19 just asking for an observation report. I don’t know if the reason they haven’t scheduled a fof because of covid and any backlog they have but they should at least be completing a section 7 in the meantime.

Again i'm no lawyer but one of the things I was told was that a judge won't read a whole document fully (obviously might depend on the judge) so to focus on the important things and keep things short.

Where are you in the hearing process? Until you get to the final hearing things are still open and being discussed, so even if it's not recorded it doesn't mean he got away with it.

I would say try not to worry about it in general, there seems to be enough there to stop him having unsupervised contact (I couldn't start with unsupervised contact even though it was openly stated by all involved that I was no threat to my daughter, I just had to rebuild a relationship first because of the time it took for the court process)

Good luck with it all, it must be horrible trying to get it done with everything else going on! As if it wouldn't be on your mind enough anyway, now there's nothing to distract you.

Thank you @FatherB, currently going for a DRA long story short, the court are just wanting to do an observation assessment and want the social worker to advise on future contact if any.

It is horrible timing, my ex was out of the picture for a while and reappeared along with a court date two days after my Nan passed away last month. So along with the added stress, grieving, looking after dd and no distraction there are certainly days where I feel low.