A (A Minor: Domestic Abuse: Fact Finding) (No. 3), Re

This hearing arises in private law proceedings concerning a five-year-old girl whom I will continue to identify as ‘A.’ She has always lived with her mother and for the last four years she has spent little time with her father who applies to the court for orders that A should live with him or spend significant periods in his care. Numerous attempts at establishing contact between A and her father have failed. The focus of this hearing has been the mother’s serious allegations of abuse against the father. These fall into two main categories, the father’s alleged coercive and controlling behaviour, and his organisation of a serious attack on the mother by two unidentified masked men during which the mother suffered significant injuries.

The hearing has been procedurally complex with the father not attending the first part of the hearing, subsequently applying to set aside the earlier decision to proceed in his absence and to reopen this hearing. These have been the subject of two judgment Re A (A Minor: Preliminary Issue: Proceeding in the absence of a party)[2025] EWFC 346and Re A (A Minor: Proceeding in the absence of a party: Application to set aside) (No. 2)[2025] EWFC 347 that inform the relevant procedural background to this hearing and must be read together with the present judgment.

I am grateful to counsel for their detailed submissions on the applicable legal principles, their agreed statement of the law and some of the more specific cases that I have considered. It is a simple and general rule that the party seeking to rely on a relevant disputed fact must prove that fact. In civil and family proceedings such facts must be proven on a balance of probabilities. The court is not bound by the schedule of allegations before it and can make such findings as are relevant and supported by evidence. The guiding principles were most helpfully summarised by Baker J (as he then was) in Re JS [2012] EWHC 1370 (Fam). Following this decision, Jackson J (as he then was) in Lancashire County Council v C, M and F (Children: Fact finding Hearing) [2014] EWFC 3 added a further item to this invaluable list of important considerations.

More specifically, inRe A, B and C (Children) [2021] EWCA Civ 45, Macur LJ provided a most helpful guidance on the treatment of lies and dishonesty. These may be summarised as follows:

The parents began their relationship in 2017. They have never been married or cohabited. The mother has three older children, and the father has a young child from a more recent relationship. Earlier in the parents’ relationship, the mother fell pregnant but suffered a miscarriage. Their three-year relationship ended shortly after A was born. The father remained involved in A’s life, but the parents were unable to agree the longer-term arrangements leading to the father initiating these proceedings in the family court on 1 October 2021.

Pursuant to the persisting arrangements at the time, the father collected A from the mother’s address in the morning of 17 December 2021. Thereafter the mother was alone at her address. On returning downstairs, she was confronted by two masked men in her property, with one standing by the front door that was habitually left unlocked and the other facing the mother. The latter of the two men attacked the mother by beating her, throwing a toxic substance in her face, lacerating her face and throat. The mother managed to escape through her living room window facing the front and public side of her property. The two men escaped. There were no signs of forced entry, and nothing was taken from the property.

The police have diligently investigated this horrific attack but have been unable to press charges against any individuals. The scenes of crime photographs of the mother’s property in the aftermath of this attack speak to the ferocity with which the attack was undertaken and what she has had to endure during and since this gruesome event.

The father’s conduct after this event has been the subject of much scrutiny and I will refer to some of the detail later in this judgment. The mother and the police are of the firm view that this attack was orchestrated by the father who through his significant history of criminality has the capacity, the means, and the motive to facilitate this attack upon the mother.

The court proceedings continued. Notwithstanding the assistance of Cafcass, a local authority, an experienced independent social worker and the mother’s support, it has not been possible to establish contact between A and her father. In the most recent reports of the independent social worker, concerns have been raised about A’s serious anxiety on being separated from her mother and the father’s lack of acknowledgement or insight into these concerns.

The mother’s allegations against the father have loomed throughout most of these proceedings but had not been pursued by the mother until more recently. In August 2024, the court determined that a fact-finding hearing was necessary. The parties required a significant period to obtain the necessary disclosure and the fact finding commenced in March 2025. The father applied to adjourn the hearing but failed to attend to pursue his application. For reasons that I have set out in my first of the two earlier judgments, I refused his application for an adjournment and having given him an opportunity to attend, proceeded in his absence. The father subsequently became involved in the continuing hearing in the circumstances that I have detailed in the second of the two aforementioned judgments.

I am grateful to counsel for their helpful submissions. I have had the benefit of considering the detailed evidence that is filed in these proceedings and hearing the oral testimony of the mother, the officer in the case ‘P’, the father and his mother who is A’s paternal grandmother. It is essential to note that the father has not cross examined the first two witnesses who gave their oral testimony in his absence. By contrast the father and his mother were cross examined. This is an important factor that must be weighed in the analysis of the overall evidential landscape.

By way of a general observation, I found the mother to be clear and consistent in her evidence. Her evidence was corroborated by other evidence in some important regards and was in the main internally consistent. Despite her obvious and tremendous distress, she was commendably fair and careful when giving her oral testimony. I also found P to be a credible and fair witness. She was careful to separate her knowledge of facts from her opinion and readily recognised that her firmly held opinions about the father’s part in the attack upon the mother were not based on any direct evidence of his involvement rather circumstantial evidence that aided her in coming to her views. She was also careful to rely appropriately on police ‘intelligence’ about the father and to distinguish this from his established conduct as is documented in his criminal antecedents.

Regrettably, I found the father to be an unreliable witness, who demonstrated little interest beyond self-preservation. At times, his evidence was contradictory and at other times his version of notable events unsustainable. For example, his explanation about the series of events concerning his football injury, the treatment that followed and the x-ray imaging lacked any coherence and was entirely unsustainable. This issue not only concerns the father’s general credibility but the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his ends and to control the court process. When asked about pertinent issues concerning his relationship with the mother, his attitude towards her and his involvement in the attack upon the mother, he vacillated between total evasion and a self-assured passively combative response. He showed no regard for the mother’s wellbeing, not least as the main carer for their daughter, this being entirely consistent with his documented attitude towards her in the aftermath of the attack.

Sadly, his attitude appears to have corroded the views of the paternal grandmother who was entrenched with her negative opinions about the mother that on her account were rooted in the mother referring to the father with profane language on one occasion. Whilst it was entirely clear to me that the father was untruthful in his evidence, I am less certain that the same can be said about the paternal grandmother whose views were in my judgment corroded by her loyalty to and protection of her son.

Turning to the specific allegations, I have no hesitation in finding that the father was coercive and controlling of the mother. The evidence in this regard comes from the mother’s own direct knowledge as the victim of his abuse and is corroborated by the documented evidence. Importantly, despite the father’s denial of this head of allegations, in some respects his evidence also corroborated the mother’s account. One such example was his demand on two separate occasions for the return of some items that he had purchased for A as a form of punishment and control of the mother. His lack of regard for A at the time and subsequently in the witness box gave an insight into the father’s self-centred and controlling behaviour.

It is equally clear to me that during their relationship he belittled the mother, corrected her language, and punished her with prolonged periods of silence when the mother’s behaviour did not match his expectations. Contrary to his assertion that in the circumstances his behaviour might have been reasonable and not controlling, it was in my judgment clearly used as a means of abusing the mother. The evidence clearly demonstrates that his attempts at controlling and coercing the mother escalated after the parties separated. His demands for shared care arrangements, threats of court proceedings, requiring detailed ledgers of the minutia of the money spent on A in the face of his own luxurious lifestyle and withholding or limiting financial contributions towards A’s daily expenses are clear examples of the escalation in his abuse of the mother.

The evidence about the person responsible for the attack upon the mother is less clear with no witnesses who can attest to any direct knowledge of the father’s involvement in this attack. The evidence in support of the mother’s allegation originates from multiple sources that are best characterised as circumstantial or indirect requiring closer attention and analysis.

Mr Metzer KC and Ms Traugott point to several features of the evidence and submit that when considered together with the father’s deliberate lies and fabrication of evidence, they can only lead the court to make an inevitable finding that the father orchestrated the attack upon the mother. They submit that the father’s extensive criminal history, his access to funds that are clearly gained through criminal activities, his motivations in the context of private law proceedings, his apparent obstruction of the police investigation of the attack and his general lack of regard for the mother’s welfare readily illustrates that the father is the only person who would have orchestrated the attack. These submissions are largely echoed in the independent submissions of Miss Thornton on behalf of A who does not actively pursue any specific findings.

Mr Griffiths strongly opposes the above approach to the evidence and raises a number of significant concerns that require the court to exercise extreme caution and ultimately to dismiss the mother’s allegations. These include a cautious approach to the evidence of P and the mother when the father has not had the opportunity of cross examining the same. He warns against any finding of propensity on the part of the father to behave in the way alleged in the face of no established similar behaviour. The father’s proper exercise of his rights in the context of a criminal investigation cannot lead the court to draw adverse inference about him.

Turning to the detail of the evidence that informs the parties’ respective submissions, whilst I accept that the father has never been ordered to provide any evidence of his sources of income, in my judgment he has continued to be less than candid and truthful about this issue which has been raised during these protracted hearings and could have been dealt with. On his own evidence, there is a clear difference between what he declares to be his modest income and his luxurious and expensive lifestyle. His expensive taste and lifestyle clearly cannot be met by his modest declared income as a mobile barber. It was noteworthy that the father sought to justify this by referring to another company that he owns which was mentioned for the first time in the witness box. His explanation for the police finding £7,000 cash at his property verged on the preposterous and spoke to his misplaced confidence in his ability to explain the inexplicable. In my judgment, the father’s lifestyle is supported by funds that are unexplained and most likely to have been gained illegally. I note that the father’s lifestyle was one of the attractions for the mother in those early days of their relationship but accept that she was not aware of his criminal antecedents.

The evidence about the father’s conduct in the aftermath of the attack speaks to the father’s self-centred and manipulative nature. The father’s thinly veiled attempt at gaining an advantage in the early part of these proceedings by using the horrific circumstances as an excuse not to return A to the mother’s care is a concerning example. Ultimately A was returned after police intervention with a worrying lack of regard by the father for the impact of his action on A or her mother.

Another extremely concerning feature of the father’s evidence has been his persistent denial of any knowledge of the suspects who have been arrested in connections with the attack on the mother. Days before the commencement of this hearing and shortly before sacking his legal team, the father filed and served his sixth statement in which for the first time he accepted knowing one of the suspects. His explanation as to why he had not mentioned this before lacked any credibility and was untruthful.

The father has consistently maintained that the mother named an assailant when in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. This is not recorded in any documents and vehemently denied by the mother. The paternal grandmother’s evidence supported the father’s assertion in this regard. However, when considered in the context of the father’s motivations to gain an advantage in these proceedings and his attempts at detracting attention from him, on balance I do not find that the mother ever mentioned the name of any assailant and that the father’s account is untruthful.

I accept the father’s explanation for making no comments when interviewed by the police in connection with the attack on the mother. I am confident that he acted on advice in this regard and by not providing his personal identification number to his telephone. However, I do not accept that this was the only reason and find that the father was also motivated by self-preservation. Not only did he not provide any assistance to the police investigation, he was actively invested in detracting any attention away from himself.

Notwithstanding my observations about the father and the evidence of his conduct as set out in the preceding paragraphs, there is no evidence that the father has a propensity towards violence or organisation of a violent act as alleged. As Mr Griffiths correctly submits, the father’s criminal antecedents does not disclose any behaviour that can be said to be of the species as the alleged organisation of the attack upon the mother (see Jackson LJ in R v P [2020] EWCA Civ 1088 on the application in family cases of the Supreme Court’s decision in R v Mitchell [106] UKSC 55).

Whilst I am entirely clear that the father had the means to pay for and orchestrate such an attack, I am not satisfied that the evidence of his motivation to do so is sufficiently reliable. As I have commented earlier in this judgment, the father has been self-centred, motivated by self-preservation and sought to gain an advantage in these proceedings by using the mother’s circumstances to further his aspiration to have A living with him. Whilst the court may draw inference from his conduct, I am not satisfied that the required inferences that would support the findings sought is justified on the available evidence. Whilst I found the independent evidence of P and that of the mother to be reliable, their respective opinion, conjectures, or instinct about the father’s part in this terrible event have little probative value that would inform a finding against the father. After considering the totality of the evidence, in my judgment a conclusion that the father had arranged the attack upon the mother would be impermissible and would stretch the fabric of the evidential landscape beyond breaking point.

For reason that I have set out above, I find that: