Can it be considered harassment if it's via parenting app?

[piscofrisco]

Long history of high conflict between dh and the step kids mum. She is controlling and has never got over family court awarding dh 50/50 with the boys when her proposal was that he see them 4 nights a month on the basis that 'she's their Mum').

She has sent him 11 abusive messages on the parenting app this morning.

(She saw on the kids football team wattsapp that dss 1 is not playing football tomorrow as he is going to a sleepover tonight which doesn't finish til an hour after his game starts, plus his game is the same time as DSs2's so logistically it was going to be hard anyway-it will be the first game he has missed on our weekends in two years despite dh having to do 2 hour round trips both Saturday and Sunday to get them to the team she enrolled them in without discussion).

Messages range from 'you're a bad dad' to 'you're abusing our children by not taking dss1 to his game' to long messages about how dh is 'just like his dad' (who had clinical depression and who therefore wasn't as involved as he could have been when dh was little-something she knows of course, that dh struggled with and which couldn't be farther from how he is himself), to finally 'if you were any kind of dad you would move to be nearer the boys' (she moved them 50 miles away 2 years ago to move in with her new boyfriend in a town that no one would choose to live in, which additionally would be 100 miles from dh's
work, 70 from mine, plus we have my dd's
doing a levels here and we own a house-bought on the basis that she was staying in the town they originally lived in, which is near us)

Dh has responded once to point out that what happens on his weekends is not her business and to say please use this parenting app as was intended, for arrangements re the boys and not to be abusive.

He is in tears as she just never stops with this sort of behaviour and it's been 5 years. (i was not the OW before anyone asks, she had the affair that ended their marriage and I met Dh after that).

I know he can simply stop looking at the
app for now. And he has. But we are at breaking point now. Would there be any point in logging it with 101? Would it be considered harassment? Or what else can we do?

We just want to enjoy our time with the boys as much as we can, but she never lets up.

This sounds awful.
i don’t know about the app and what constitutes abuse:harassment but if this has been going for a while then I would seek legal advice. It isn’t sustainable to live with stress like that and you have to protect you and your DHs mental health.
how old are the kids? How many years have you got left needing contact with her?

We are trying to go back to court. But they ask you to mediate first, which she says she will then doesn't respond to the meeting requests. Plus expense. Stress. The discussions she has with the boys where she frames it as 'dad taking me to court, etc etc).

It's already pushing us to the limit in every way tbh.

They are 10 and 12

Yes the format doesn't matter. Take screenshots. Sorry you are at end of that attitude.

Yes it can.

It’s not like she is bombarding him with messages just about the kids activities or something. Which might be harder.

But she is being abusive and using the app to do it.

As an interim move why don’t you take over the whatsapp and just relay necessary/polite messages frim her to him. Only respond with non comittal things like “noted” or “ok”. But definitely screenshot everything.

Yes, harassment is still harassment through an app. What is ge going back to court over if he already has 50/50?

Travel- we do it all. Great expense in terms of time and cost.
And she has now enrolled DS2 in a second football team (her boyfriend having fallen out with the coach at his first) for which training falls on a Friday night. She declared we would not be getting the children until 7.30 on a Friday evening on our weekends (court order says 5). It's an hours journey back so they wouldn't be back til 8.30. (And it's a two hour round trip for us already a bit much at the end of a long working week, for both us and two tired boys-making it later makes something shit pretty unbearable for all). It prevents us from doing anything at all on a Friday night, which is our only real family night, as both DD's work, plus we spend all day Saturday and Sunday pretty much ferrying the boys to games.

We had already moved round our whole routine including working hours for both of us to allow them to play for the original
Team she enrolled them in (and took them to before even discussing it so to them it was a done deal). It's not possible for us to do that again.

My now DH was bombarded with vitriolic ranting text messages & emails from his EW (10 years after he got divorced). The abuse was so bad it was raised in court and a judge deemed her communication to be abusive.

The judge wrote it into their contact order that she was only allowed to email (no calls or text messages) on a special email address to him (which he would then periodically check).

She started to slip in a ‘contact book’ with the kids on handovers which the kids referred to as ‘mummy’s shouty book’.

It is abusive, but it’s hard to prove.

My advice would be ‘grey rock’ all comms every single time (look it up). When these volatile people don’t get a rise they soon get bored.

Can he block her on the app? If not, just come off it.