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Legal advice

Cannot trust the system to advocate for me and my children in child arrangement and non-mol proceedings. Help being as clear and proactive as possible.

I have had a traumatic experience with children’s services and MARAC in 2023 upon separation where the children were removed from my care and placed in the sole care of our abuser. His abuse was never directly physical to me, but was severely psychological, emotional, sexual, involved using health services to control me (calling crisis services or attending appointments until I was misdiagnosed with a serious mental illness so I would both doubt the existence of abuse and also have no credibility whenever I reached out about it), damage to property, violence to our dog, threats and lots of intimidation. To the children it was mostly emotional and neglectful, however if I ever tried to leave or report him, he would become physical with them and increasingly mentally abusive to them so I would back down or become too mentally distressed to advocate effectively. My lack of credibility, mental deterioration at the time (CS came out to us because I presented to the hospital suicidal), along with his sudden false parental concern and displays of affection meant that (in the words of children’s services) I was the unsafe parent despite “allegations”. At the time I even admitted to them I needed time to recover and be protected from him, but requested the children be in my mum’s care so they weren’t exposed to an abusive parent. But I was dismissed and labeled as “paranoid”. I had to jump through hoops for 3 months while the children struggled at nursery and school with zero self-esteem and were bags of nerves, but they’ve come on leaps and bounds since and you’d never know they used to suffer so much. However, between 2024 and the events at the end of last year although we weren’t together, I was still willingly but unwantedly enduring financial abuse, harassment and control post-separation, and due to my fear of ever verbalizing it again, I had learnt to live with it to stop him from turning on the children again the way he did when I was first trying to leave.

In December last year, after months of really worrying behaviour and escalating abuse, I refused him the ability to have contact with the children due to recent disclosures made by both children involving events of physical harm, as well escalating emotional distress the children were exhibiting and the way they were speaking about myself and him upon returning from his weekend care ever since he found out that I have a new partner. After 3 months and the CMS increasing his payments he has filed a C100. A non-molestation is also being considered within the arrangement instead of separately as I had already applied for one prior to this to protect us. Upon doing this (although I have an understandable strong distaste for them) I called children’s services, disclosed everything, and they assured me that they had no need to open a case as long as I continued restricting contact.

My concerns on the run up to the hearing:

He had already ensured to begin taking the children on days out, heavily engaging in therapy and practicing new gentle parenting techniques and child focused behaviors as soon as he received a warning letter in October making him aware I was again finally reaching out to report his abuse. So was already ahead of the game despite continuing to emotionally and physically abuse and intimidate the children simultaneously.

He has always refrained from showing any signs of abusive or controlling behaviour in writing or responding in writing even if I’ve asked him to take up matters via text instead of calls or lingering around my home at handover.
So examples of evidence I have so far are:

- A video recording where he was forcing himself on me and trapping me in his home which was entirely candle lit in the middle of the day (recorded just in case due to his erratic behavior at the time, had a bad feeling when I was led to believe he was handing over uniform from the weekend before, he had recently moved to the home across from mine. You cannot see us due to me holding the phone by my side, but can hear my protests, hear him scaring me, and see the room of candles).

-Evidence of him making false claims to Child Maintenance repeatedly

-My own documented log of events with dates and times

-Messages of me asking for him to text and not force verbal engagement and insisting on moving to parenting app so everything is monitored and admissible when he started getting more and more unpredictable

-School reports showing emotional and self esteem issues when the children were in his care and then recent ones showing the children excelling

-Me obtaining a domestic abuse support working for the children in January so they would get the tools they needed and also learn to recognise and disclose abuse by an unbiased third party so I could get help to protect them

-Written instances where I’ve disclosed abuse to different services over the years

-Times I have messaged him following any abuse, any concerns re. The children, or predicting and getting ahead of abuse on the usual events like Christmas or birthdays (however any response to abuse in writing was always cleverly avoided)

-There is probably more written evidence of him being nasty; threatening and intimidating me; controlling me; attempting to mentally harm me, between October 2025 and now than during the entire 8 years I’ve known him. Because I had never had the nerve to move on with my life so the moment he became aware of my serious relationship he became very erratic and at times has had total loss of the usual firm-composure he had and has lashed out or said things recklessly.

I am confident in my own evidence if it weren’t for how intelligent and calculated he is. I’m really concerned of how much weight they will give to his counter-allegations that are very clearly insinuating mental illness, and emotional and psychological harm to the children from myself. I know the strongest evidence he holds to support his false persona and self-victimization is his therapy and potentially statements from friends and family who he has reframed reality to. Because knowing him well, once cornered he will eventually say “yes I WAS abusive but look I’ve changed”.
If I make statements regarding his use of therapy of the convenient timing of his child centered concerns and behaviors in order to pre-empt his arguments before CAFCASS base assessments to include his seemingly good behavior and active engagement (similarly to 2023) to counteract the risk he actually poses, will it come across as me being opinionated and making predictions? It took him all of a month of resuming contact with me after the CS involvement concluded early 2024 for him to begin the abuse again. And at this point, as much as I wish it weren’t the case, I cannot allow our children unsupervised exposure to him and trust that he will ever prioritize their wellbeing over his need to hurt me. And without sacrificing my relationship and my life I have built for me and the children, he will be unhappy, hateful, and extremely harmful. I understand it’s hard to get full parental responsibility, and I also don’t want my children to hate me for not allowing a relationship that they’re too young to see as abusive and abnormal, however my proposal to court will be to limit communication between them to text messaging through MyFamilyWizard which will be monitored at all times and limited to an agreed upon period of time per child a week. And upon conclusion of their therapy/support, should the worker approach me and express face to face is in their best interests, supervised contact centre for the foreseeable with an order outlining that he cannot apply to change arrangements for X amount of time.