Stopping court ordered contact

[Fajita123]

If I have stopped court ordered contact because of safeguarding concerns would I need to go through mediation before applying for court order

Breif backstory......Ex used to have children EOW and half the holidays but he during summer holidays he wanted to change order due to his stepson (14) mental health problems and he said he had become violent. Children had also told me after last contact that the stepson has been saying inappropriate sexual remarks to DD 7 in front of DD 11, they also told me that their dad had told them to keep secrets from me. Because of all of these safeguarding reasons I stopped physical contact. I told him he could still speak / facetime children whenever he wanted but he uses this as an opportunity to bad mouth me and tells the children he will probably never see them again as he will never talk to me. I actually don't mind him taking the kids for a couple of hours but he refuses to communicate with me.

I am wondering if I should apply to the courts to end current court order.

My understanding is that if contact is court ordered then any changes need to go back through the court. If you have stopped him seeing the children without raising it with the court and having the order changed then you are in contempt of court and there are penalties for this.

Did you have a solicitor? If so, please get in contact with them and let them know what has happened so it can be officially raised through the courts.

Did you report any of your concerns to the police or ss?

if not why not?
did you inform their schools of this? If not why not?
did you inform your ex in writing and let him
respond? If not why not?

these would be the questions any court would ask

Did he verbally tell you about the step son becoming violent or was it in writing. Hopefully you have a trail of your discussions.

There are, in reality, no penalties for stopping court ordered contact.

It may be best to wait and see if he decides to go back to court, then voicing your concerns.

You could get 30 mins free legal advice from a solicitor, or try a helpline like Rights of Women

But yes as others have said, try to make sure you keep written records of anything relevant, including your explaining to him why you have stopped contact.

Otherwise he may try to claim all sorts of untrue things about you to a court or other professionals.

Thank you for your replies, yes he told me about the concerns with his stepson via email he said other agencies were involved and it wasn't safe to have the children fir long periods. This raised alarm bells but I still sent them for a weekend Instead of the two weeks he should of had them, when they returned they told me about the sexual comments and gestures the stepson was making. I raised my concerns via email with ex but he didn't respond so I stopped contact.

I have sought legal advice and they suggested I stop contact and wait for him to take me to court. I don't want to stop contact indefinitely but I need to ensure my children are safe but as he refuses to communicate with me or reassure me I have no option to stop contact and either wait for him to take me to court or take it back myself

then do this

i would not want him having physical contact with the step son around full stop.

if you have stopped contact and then suddenly send them for 2 hours or a day for a break and Step son is there, you wont have a leg to stand on in court.

stand firm, keep them safe

For the kids sake some amount of contact should be facilitated and it shows a willingness on your part.

Send him an email and let him know he can have them for a few hours in the evenings or take them out at the weekend.

I stopped contact for safe guarding concerns. I then returned to court for a rearrangement of the order. Me initiating return to court was meant to show that I knew I had broken the order and was taking responsibility.
No mediation required.
I represented myself.

Thank you all so much for your input. The children will be seeing him for a couple of hours next week.

@TheOrigRights what was the outcome did you just file a c100?

Yes, I filed a c100. I did have some advice from my solicitor with the process, mainly to check I'd done the forms correctly so that time would not be wasted.

The outcome was that DS no longer had to see his father. If he wanted to it was fine, but if his father wanted to see him against DS's will then he would have to return to court. He never did.
DS did see his father a couple more times after that, but just over a year ago decided he didn't want to see him again.

The original CAO was made in 2017 and rearranged in 2018.