Social Services & Accusations from abusers

[lennonchloe]

Hi,
So I'm looking some advice..
I left a 9 year abusive relationship over a year ago. For the last year my ex has made my life a living hell by harassing me and constantly accusing me of sleeping about or texting new people etc. Last week when in my home collecting the children he assaulted me in front of both my children and I had to report this to police.

Obviously social services have now been involved and his contact with the children has been temporarily stopped until an appropriate adult can be found to supervise his contact with both children.

My fear is that he is now going to start making false accusations against me in regards to drugs (I smoke a small amount of marijuana when my children are not here)

He has already been to my family and told them that I abuse both my children which I absolutely do not do. And I am now afraid he will start to make these same accusations to the social services.

I am terrified of losing my children because of false accusations he may now make up and I was wondering if anyone has been a situation like this before and knows whether or not social services will take such accusations seriously?

Thanks

false accusations against me in regards to drugs (I smoke a small amount of marijuana when my children are not here)

so it wouldnt be a false accusation that you take drugs.
but if he makes a spurious accusation and doesn’t have any proof… then he won’t get far.
and presumably he doesn’t have evidence of anything more serious than this?

I’d suggest stopping the weed smoking (if you can) and def make sure it’s very well hidden, ideally out of the house in a garden shed or with a friend?
I say this with no judgement as I smoke myself and think it’s much better for you than alcohol!

However you could have a bar full of booze and SS won’t care, but they would over a plant that’s grown and dried….

Well done for sticking up to him.

I only smoke when the children are not here and that it's a very small amount so generally when the children come back it's all gone.

However, since his contact has been stopped and I now have the children full time I don't smoke it because I wouldn't whilst in full care of them.

Sorry, I should have elaborated more on this point, he has accused me before of doing cocaine when I've been out with friends, which I can hand on my heart say I don't do. My worry is that if he says I do cocaine the social services will want to drug test me and find marijuana in my system. What im wondering is if I should be upfront with the social services and explain that I have smoked weed in my free time so that they are aware before he makes other accusations?

Also no there is no proof of anything as I've never abused my children. I grew up in foster care so he knows I am terrified of the social services and he has threatened me before that he knows the right things to say to have my children taken.

My worry is that if he says I do cocaine the social services will want to drug test me and find marijuana in my system.

when did you last smoke

whatever though… stop

I had a friend go through exactly the same, even down to the weed smoking. She was accused of taking cocaine, drinking and neglecting the kids. Social workers aren't stupid. They can spot abused, neglected children. She took a drug test herself, bought on amazon, and was open to smoking. Of course they advised She stop but took no action because it wasn't left around the house, no paraphernalia, kids taken care of etc. Let him lie, prove him wrong and it'll just make him look like the idiot he is.

If you're saying you don't smoke it anymore why are you worried it would show up in a drug test probably months from now?

This only happened a week ago. His contact has only been stopped in the past week, I was still smoking a couple of weeks ago. I don't know how any of this works, I was worried that if he made these accusations now and I was tested now they would see the weed and Id lose my children. That's what I'm worried about I wasn't aware they don't test for months, hence why I'm asking for advice.

If you are only an occasional usual then there is a good chance that it is already out of your system - mild to moderate use (up to 4 times a week) only stays in urine for about a week I think.

You can buy test kits from Amazon though if you want to put your mind at rest.

However, the best answer is to be honest. “I have smoked weed historically but not recently and never with the children in the house. I have never taken any other illegal drugs. I am happy to have a urine test to confirm this.”

Social honestly don't care about weed. Nothing will come of this. Just do whatever social say regarding contact with ex and obviously don't take him back that will go more against you than the weed.

Just be honest with social services.
Hes a cunt. Dont let him intimidate you and well done for leaving him to give your kids a better life.
Get support as he sounds horrible.
Tell social services and the police everything about his abuse.

You won’t have your children taken from you for occasionally smoking weed.

Be open and honest with police and SW about the abuse you have suffered.

I’m so sorry you find yourself in this awful situation OP, I hope it is all resolved soon and you and your DCs can recover from it all x

Dont smoke again, takes 6 weeks to leave system (for heavy user) but will take time for them to order a test. And if you get a clear one thats him disproved. A smoke on the odd occasion imo is not worth the risk and drama in this situation.

Also i think social get this a lot. Accusations and things esp in splits. So im pretty sure they will have experience to see past this stuff.

As police are involved and he is abusive its probably good to have social there to back you up on how to deal with this :)

Yes be honest with the social worker. They are unlikely to care much, but they will be unimpressed if it comes to light later.

What false applications has he made OP?
From your own account you admit taking drugs ?

Dump the weed so you can look squeakier than squeaky clean

If he does make accusations against you, it will be weighed against his own appalling behaviour and probably seen for the spiteful tit-for-tat it is, but you can't take chances in a situation this volatile

presumably your family laughed in his face and slammed the door to him?

I also agree that for now don't smoke any weed or have any anywhere in the house, shed, or hidden in the garden. Just give it up for now. It's not worth the stress of wondering if SS will do anything about it if they find evidence of it.

Also, what was he doing in your house? In the future any contact needs to be outside. So if contact restarts, he arrives, stays at the gate, the kids go to meet him. Then afterwards he drops them off at the gate, they walk up the path and into the house by themselves.

Keep an email address just for contact with him to arrange pick ups and drop offs. Block him on everything else. Reduce his intrusion into your life as much as possible.

Did you read any of my posts or did you just come on here straight away to defend an abuser?

As stated. He made false accusations about me abusing my children to my family when I first left him. I wouldn't put it past him to now do the same with social services.

Maybe don't comment when someone is asking for advice if you don't have anything helpful to add. Thanks.

who is defending him op? 😐

Pumpkinpie1 · Today 16:10

What false applications has he made OP?
From your own account you admit taking drugs ?

This is standard behaviour from a perpetrator of domestic abuse. If he was so concerned about the children being neglected, why didn’t he inform social services? Social services will need evidence and they should speak to others involved in the children’s lives I.e. health visitor, school/nursery etc.
If social services removed all children, due to their parents smoking weed, there would be tens of thousands of children in care.
It might be a good idea to contact a domestic abuse charity to support yourself and your children.

You don't have to stop smoking weed if you don't want to. If social services decided an assessment was needed they would ask you about it, but they'd only be concerned if there was evidence that it was affecting your children - examples of which would be things like - not taking kids to school because you're too stoned, or smoking weed indoors with a baby, or violent people coming to your door and making threats because you owe drug debts. They'll ask permission to check with other people to see if there are any worries about children, eg school, police info, gp.

Social services are not the morality police. While they won't/can't condone smoking weed due to the illegality, they won't be concerned unless there's evidence of children being harmed. Plenty of people do illegal things and have children at home without any social services input because it doesn't affect the children.

Fwiw SS can only insist on drug tests if it's through the court, which is not something you need to concern yourself with. There are some local drug and alcohol services that will offer swab tests but that's not really relevant to you as a) SS don't rely on them too much because they're not great evidence (eg most drugs only show up for a few days) and b) they're generally something for people who have had a dependency and are in a abstinence programme who want to try and prove that they're no longer using. Again, not relevant to your situation.

SS are very used to malicious referrals from exes. They're not daft. They might (depending on what is alleged) have to investigate, but they don't take stuff at face value. Again, it'll be down to whether there's evidence of harm to the children. Frankly you could be smoking every day and growing it in the cupboard, if its kept away from the kids and the kids are doing alright they'll leave you alone!

Firstly, please don’t panic. I unfortunately have first hand experience of this and found that SS / the family courts are very aware that abusers often make false allegations when you attempt to leave / when there is evidence against them. In my case, my ex’s numerous false allegations backfired. SS advised no direct contact as his failure to acknowledge his own behaviour and instead focus on allegations about me (with no evidence) suggested to them that he had a lack of awareness of his behaviour and therefore “limited capacity to change”.

I would strongly advise you to stop smoking weed asap though, and remove all traces. No judgement at all, I have a close friend who like you only smokes occasionally, when her child isn’t around. However, from personal experience, abusers like to try and find something which is a tiny bit true and present that as evidence that of something completely different, so I’d be wary of giving him absolutely anything to try and manipulate into a safeguarding concern.

Maybe I didn't explain myself correctly, however, I think I did. But I'll repeat again. I never said he was accusing me falsely of smoking weed. I admitted that I do. I said he accused me of taking cocaine which I don't do, and I was asking if I would be better to admit to the social services about the weed instead of waiting for him to accuse me of doing cocaine to them, me being drug tested and them finding marijuana in my system. I don't know anything about any of this so I was looking for other people's opinions or experiences on what I should do.

As stated in the original post he's previously made false accusations about me abusing my children and I was worried that he would now do that to the social services too. Trying to paint a picture of me that I'm some sort of junkie who abuses her children. Which is what my biological mother was.

I'm not worried about the allegations of abuse because I know the couldn't be further from the truth, my children have everything they could want and need, a clean warm home and my attention 24/7.

I am more worried about the fact that this man knows I grew up in care, had a troubled childhood and suffer with anxiety. I am more concerned about the picture he will try and paint of me to social services and how likely they are to take him seriously, especially given the fact I had a troubled childhood.

My mother lost all of us because she was heavily addicted to drugs and abused and negelected us. My biggest concern is that they are going to be taken in by his story that I'm following in my mums footsteps more or less.

As you can imagine I am terrified of being tarnished by my mums bad reputation and losing my children as l a result of it and I don't think it's irrational to feel that way.

One of the reasons it took me so long to leave him was because of his manipulation about my mental health and childhood, I suffered with PND after I had both my children which I was told was common after experiencing childhood trauma. He held this against me massively and made me feel that if I left nobody would trust me with my children due to my mental health and especially because of my childhood.