Please help me. Father refusing to bring daughter home

[seethesunflowers]

Hello everyone,

I have NC to protect my identity.

I know it is too early to post at this time. But I haven't been sleeping nor eating for a couple of days. My abusive ex is making excuses not to return our daughter back home and I don't know what to do.

To begin. I have a daughter who is 13 and has additionally needs. I have been the primary carer for my daughter since she's been born whilst her father was in and out of her life and due to the abuse, was encouraged to see our daughter through supervised contact but he refused.

Two years ago, he reappeared and requested to be involved in our daughter's life. But has caused nothing but trouble. He proclaims that he wants to see his daughter but I feel this is more about him reclaiming his control. So many episodes have happened (he has an indefinite restraining order in place). He has been stalking me, been outside our flat on numerous occasions, came to my daughter school to attempt to take her and sundew had a big scuffle with the teachers who stopped him, One day my daughter saw him on the way to school and she went out with him and by the time I found out, he then began to refuse to bring her back, we rang the police, we were searching up and down past 1am until my mother convinced him to bring her back. He proclaimed that he wanted to see his daughter and I was refusing and wanted us to sort out the matter. I did not. I was hoping he would soon begin to lose interest but I wished I took this as a sign to take this to court. As you can see, he has been breaching the restraining order over and over again.

Fast forward to last week, my daughter and I have been staying at my family's house during the summer break as we are renovating our flat. My cousin and my ex get along very very well and in the past, when my daughter will spend weekends at my family's house, my ex will contact my cousin to get through to my daughter and they will have telephone conversations. I didn't think this was weird and was slightly relieved so didn't take an issue with this. But then my ex would give my cousin stuff to give to my daughter that he bought for her- but I was unaware, to the point that my cousin would refuse to tell me what the dad got for my daughter as he would say "it is his business and he told me not to tell you".

Anyway, back to last week. So we have been staying at my family's house yada yada. My daughter went to see my cousin to ask him about something, whilst I was downstairs pottering around. Then all of a sudden, I just heard a bang- like a door has been shut and footsteps hurrying out. I immediately went to look out of the door, but saw nothing, I then went to look out of the window to see who went out of the house, nothing, I then went upstairs to check on my daughter, but despite calling her name, she was not answering and I couldn't see my cousin. I immediately called my cousin but he was not picking up my calls. Then, I just knew that my cousin took my daughter to her father's house. I called my sister, my ex's family, and they confirmed that they were able to get through to the dad and my cousin and confirmed that my daughter was at their father's.

I have called my ex on numerous occasions to bring my daughter home. But he is refusing. He says that this is all "my fault" and that I should have made an agreement to allow him to see her and that he would only return her if an agreement was put in place or he would keep a hold of her and wait for the court to ask him to return her back. My family have been pleading with him to return our daughter back and he would then make promises that he will return her on such and such day, but makes an excuse not to bring her. He is asking to see his daughter, unsupervised, one day a week during term day and to have her for half of the holidays. But I have told him that due to his unpredictable behaviour and the fact we can't co parent and that he doesn't know my daughter very well. We need to take it step by step and have something in writing. But he is refusing.

I have had to cancel all my daughter's doctor's appointments because she is not back. I have spoken to her on the phone and she seems okay. But she doesn't know where she is and would not tell me as her father tells her not to say anything. Her father has now agreed to give her back tomorrow as she has an appointment then but now he is asking for proof of this as he has enjoyed spending time with her and does not want her to come back. Now I am up worried that this will be another excuse not to bring her home.

What do I do? I know she is 13- soon to be 14 and that she is a teen and wants to see her father and can technically just go and see her father whenever she wants without my permission. But her father's behaviour is so unpredictable, where it compromises my safety. My cousin is ignoring my calls and is refusing to tell me the father's address. I am just distraught. I have brought her up as a single parent for the past 13 years. We have a holiday booked but I don't know if I have to cancel that one. I am just broken and don't know what to do.

Cut all means of contact with the ex EXCEPT for arranging contact with their child?

Ever heard of parental alienation?

In this particular scenario though, the father has been absent for years, there's a history of domestic abuse (which the child witnessed), there is a restraining order, the child has additional needs, the father has caused the child to miss multiple medical appointments already in just this one week.... does that really sound to you like someone who should be able to just randomly take his daughter, without consent, without telling the child's mother where she even is, and that it is in any way comparable to the situations you are trying to claim is the same but with the genders flipped?

Because it isn't. You clearly have your own agenda, and you don't care that the narrative of this actual situation doesn't fit with what you want to bang on about. The mother in this case has even attempted to facilitate contact with the daughter - she's simply asked for supervised contact, for now, so that he can get to know his daughter again before even considering unsupervised contact.

Why not start your own thread if you want to talk about a specific situation you need advice on... or are you just reading something from an Incel website that tells you women are evil and withhold their children from men for no good reason all the time?

A restraining order against an ex partner has absolutely nothing to with child custody.

They are two completely different things.

Even in the circumstances you have described, he is still entitled to see his child.

As the police have also said to the OP when she asked them

In one of the OP’s comments, she mentioned there was something in the restraining order about contact with the daughter.

i do love though that you picked the ONE thing you could possibly pick fault with out of all the things I mentioned about why this poster was so worried, and why she was getting the advice she was, and chose to try to argue against that, as opposed to conceding any of it did show it was a different scenario to what you have a bee in your bonnet about.

you also chose to ignore the fact I pointed out that the OP had been trying to organise supervised contact for the child’s father. Seems he didn’t want that though… but why should a man, who is quite frankly a stranger, suddenly be allowed to take a 13 year old girl back to where he’s living and have just the two of them sitting in the room together all day, and not take her to her medical appointments? Just because he shares DNA, it’s ok to let her go alone with a man who doesn’t know her? That would be irresponsible (and I’d say the same if it had been an absent mother wanting to reconnect with a child she hasn’t seen in years).

I do think that the police probably know more about this than you though.

And the police have told the OP that it is fine for the child to be with the father, and that the father is not doing anything wrong in this instance.

The courts recommended that he have supervised contact and he refused so the OP let him develop a relationship with her daughter anyway.

the restraining order was to keep him away from the OP so by getting the cousin to bring her he’s made sure he’s not broken that.

He has parental responsibility, he hasn’t broken any laws. From what OP has said the supervised contact was a recommendation, and as she has chosen to ignore that in the past she is going to find it hard to argue now that it should be enforced.

And the daughter is 13. OP hasn’t said that she’s developmentally delayed or has no mental capacity, therefore her wishes will also be taken into account.

Morally what this man is doing is reprehensible, but it’s not for the police to enforce morals. And like it or not he hasn’t yet broken the law.

It's not helpful and no it's not better than doing nothing. How can it be helpful to berate someone for doing or not doing something that has already been discussed as infinitum?

It's not the same situation at all though.

If a woman had abused her DH, barely seen her DD for several years, was recommended to have supervised contact only due to her abusive behaviour, then took the child in an underhand way and refused to give them back, I'm sure people would be up in arms about that too.

While I am in no way condoning what this man has done, if the situation was reversed people would absolutely be taking the mother’s side, saying they’d like to hear her side etc.

So many people say that their ex partner was abusive ,though.

It's easy to say. And it's a word that's thrown around a lot

It's up to the courts to decide if he was abusive or not.

For example I know a couple that recently broke up. The woman wanted to stop the father from seeing the son at all because she said that he was "abusive".

It worth to court. The court told her that she had to let him see their son every week

There is a lot of incorrect advise on this post. Please seek advice through a domestic abuse service and report to police. You will also need to report to children’s services that he has taken her without consent, planning or permission and that he is medically neglecting her by not attending her medical appointments. The nuance of how neglectful this is, will depend on her medical needs. He will need supervised contact from now on until such a time as he can be trusted. The most important voice here between the two of you is that of your daughters, to preserve her wellbeing and safety. You also need a service that gives you advice on what you can do to prevent this happening again and what to do if it does happen again. Please don’t take advise from Mumsnet, get professional guidance as help as a lot of this is really conflicting. I appreciate the irony of me writing this advice on Mumsnet and saying not to take advice! I hope you get all the help you need and things resolve for you and your daughter’s sake.

It is ironic because lots of what you've said is wrong, and she's already got legal advice, applied to court and spoken to children's services and police who as she's been told already can't do anything.

I think it’s shocking personally for any parent to with hold access to a child ( in normal circumstances)

aI think it’s mental abuse on the child /children involved and too many people use the child as a pawn in this case the father can’t be trusted he is abusive and playing games and making ent returning the daughter when he says he will .

Sometimes children genuinely have to be keep away from the absent parent for everyone’s safety.

😂 Oh the irony indeed.

OP has spoken to the police who have told her that it is a civil matter.

The child hasn’t been abducted as the father has parental responsibility.

OP does need to go down the legal route, but coming on to a thread to say someone is being given incorrect advice and then going on to give a load of incorrect advice is hilarious.

Doesn't he have 4 abuse convictions and a restraining order.....is that not the courts and the police deciding he is indeed abusive?

Yes but they have apparently decided that he has been abusive to his partner, not to his child.

Him being abusive to his partner doesn't mean he will be abusive to his child.

Lots of ex partners are verbally abusive to each other as they don't like each other after breaking up.

There has been no restriction of access to his child.

The court has not decided that the father should not see the child

Who decided that he was abusive to his partner not his child and therefore he should have contact?

The father wasn't in the child's life. It was suggested if he wanted contact it should be supervised that was SS's recommendation but the father didn't want to see his child so it wasn't formally agreed and it never went to court because there was no reason to do that as he didnt want contact.

The OP didn't take that to a court, a decision she now regrets, so a solicitor has advised her to put that through as am emergency order which she's currently in the processes of trying to raise the money for.

@Lozgal24 I agree that there is a lot of incorrect advice on this post but unfortunately you have also given incorrect advice from a legal perspective.

Due to the father having parental responsibility and there currently being no Child Arrangements Order, Specific Issue Order or Prohibited Steps Order, he is just as entitled by law to have care of his daughter. I agree that the way he has done it is wrong and the court will take an extremely dim view on this and remedy the situation. However, it is still not a criminal matter and there is absolutely nothing the police can do in this situation. They don't have the authority to remove a child from one parent unless there are immediate life threatening concerns.

Abduction has a very specific meaning in law when it comes to children and it doesn't just mean taking the child away from the mother, as awful as that action is. Now, if the father removed the child from the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom without consent of everyone who has PR then yes, that would be abduction and would be a criminal offence.

The cousin taking the child is also not abduction because presumably the father gave permission for this to happen and therefore the cousin was acting in loco parentis as delegated by the father.

I agree that the father is being neglectful by not taking her to medical appointments and this is something that will go against him during the proceedings. However, it is still not a criminal matter.

Regards supervised contact, that is again another decision for the court and if it starts out as that, their goal is ideally to move to unsupervised eventually.

Hope you have your daughter back OP

men who are abusive to their partners are usually also directly abusive to their children too. And even if not, witnessing and living with domestic abuse is abusive to children.

@seethesunflowers howsn things now?

It will be if the OP gets the emergency order though - isn't that what's happening? Get the court order so that the police can lawfully intervene.

Similar to how Police need a warrant to do a house search? Once OP has that piece of paper it becomes a criminal matter if the child isn't returned.

It's wrong to say this isn't a police matter period - it just needs to go before a judge to make it one.

Least that's what I'm picking up from following the OPs updates more closely.

OP - any news?

@HamHook What kind of order are we talking about? If it's a CAO, PSO or SIO then it still doesn't become a criminal offence if the child is not returned. The mother would then have to apply to the court on form C79 for enforcement. If there is a penal notice attached to the order, then it could be considered contempt of court but again, the police still wouldn't get involved.

The only way the police would act would be if a removal order was granted where the court basically instructs the police to remove the child from a person or if the child's life was in imminent danger.

It's different if the man was physically or sexually abusive to partner or child.

If he was just verbally or emotionally abusive , he is still allowed access to his child.

Most humans are verbally and emotionally abusive at times. A lot of women I know have shouted at their partner in front of their child. I've seen children cry because of their mother shouting.

Verbal and emotional abuse is not enough to have the child taken away from either parent

Similar to how Police need a warrant to do a house search? Once OP has that piece of paper it becomes a criminal matter if the child isn't returned.

no, it's still a civil matter.

It's wrong to say this isn't a police matter period - it just needs to go before a judge to make it one.

no. It would only become a police matter if the father had breached the order so many times that power of arrest was attached. This is unusual.