XR (applicant father) v ZP (respondent mother)

I am concerned with the welfare of two children, GC a boy of 11 and RE a girl of 9. They live with their mother, ZP who has been represented at this hearing by Victoria Christie of Counsel. Their father is XR and he has appeared as a litigant in person.

The application is the father’s application dated 30 December 2022 for a child arrangements order to enable him to see his children. He has not seen them since October 2022.

The background is that the parents were together for around eight years and separated in August or September of 2021. The father moved out. The father says that to begin with the parties were able to make arrangements for him to see the children. The mother says she never allowed the father to see the children on his own because he could not be trusted: contact was always with other family present. In any event by the end of December 2022 contact had broken down and the father made his application to this court, alleging that the mother was deliberately blocking his contact. The mother responded to this allegation with a statement dated 24 January 2023 in which she set out numerous allegations against the father including:

The father denies these allegations or denies that his actions were unsafe.

The mother accepts that following the last of these alleged incidents, which was on 31 October 2022, she reluctantly discontinued contact. That was what gave rise to the father’s original application for contact.

A s7 report was directed and was filed on 9 August 2023. The reporter interviewed the children and found that they both loved their father and wanted to see him. However GC also said he had seen his father slap his mother’s face three times. It is recorded from the school information obtained in the process of writing the report that the school had recorded GC telling them that he had seen his mother lying on the floor with ketchup coming from her face. The recommendation of the s7 report was that a lives with order be made in favour of the mother, that the father should complete a domestic abuse perpetrator’s programme called The Change, and also the Triple P parenting programme. Once he had completed those programmes and after a period of 6 months’ supervised contact then, if no concerns were raised, contact could progress to unsupervised contact in the community.

The matter came before DDJ Fenton on 11 August 2023. He directed that upon the father producing evidence that he is attending The Change and the Triple P programme, the mother must make the children available for supervised contact at a contact centre for two hours a fortnight, costs to be shared. That order was not complied with, but the children did have one session of contact with their father on 2 December 2023. I have seen the contact notes. They are glowingly positive. When the children saw their father they jumped on him. He picked them up and gave them hugs and kisses. GC sat next to him and RE sat on his lap. The father engaged with the children, playing with them and there was lots of laughter and warmth. They gave him long hugs at the end of the session. The only negative was that it is recorded the father arrived late which was a violation of Contact Centre A Contact Centre’s contact policy. The mother alleges that the father deliberately waited outside the centre in contravention of their rule that he should arrive 15 minutes early so the parents did not encounter each other. She says he came up to her car and tried to speak to her. She did not speak to him but called the contact centre and they called him and asked him to go inside. I did not hear whether the father accepted this account or not.

In any event, that was the only contact session to take place before the next court hearing which was on 6 February 2024 before DJ Barrie. She noted that the parties agreed that the previous order had not been complied with and she ordered two hours of supervised contact with the father on alternate weekends, costs shared. The next hearing was before HHJ Roberts on 17 April 2024. There had been no contact since the last hearing because the father did not make a referral to a contact centre until around 28 March 2024, and the mother had said she could not afford to pay for half. The judge recorded that the father left the hearing before its conclusion indicating his dissatisfaction with the court process and setting out that he did not want to continue with it. HHJ Roberts discharged the existing child arrangements order and stayed proceedings. She provided that if the father wrote to the court before 17 July 2024 setting out that he wished to restore the matter, contact would resume once a fortnight, supervised in a contact centre, and she set out numerous conditions of contact including conditions that the father must attend alone, and that he must attend on time. She directed that the contact must take place at Contact Centre A, the father must pay the full costs, and that the parties must communicate only through a parenting app which the mother would choose and which the parties would pay for in equal shares. In the event that the father did not apply to restore the matter by the 17 July 2024 deadline, the application was to be automatically dismissed.

On 8 July 2024 the father applied to restore the matter. That application triggered HHJ Roberts’ directions for supervised contact to begin.

On 19 July 2024 the mother applied to discharge HHJ Roberts’ directions for supervised contact. She alleged that after the hearing before HHJ Roberts (the hearing which the father had left early expressing dissatisfaction) he had attended her house, banged on the windows and the doors, attempted to force entry and frightened her and the children. She further alleged that the father had contacted GC directly by sending text messages directly to his PlayStation, and that the messages were inappropriate. She exhibited the messages. They told GC that his mother did not want his father to be in his life, that the father had tried an infinite amount of times but he was just not allowed, and he asked GC to keep the conversations a secret because “as soon as your mom will log into your PlayStation and see that we’re talking she will somehow find a way to block me and then we can never speak again so be a big strong man and ensure that your mum cannot disconnect us ever again”. Another message says “Do you have an idea how we can see each other Maybe go out with the bikes Air or go jumping Go and play football Anything Do you have Any suggestion how we can do that”.

The father admitted going to the mother’s house after court on 17 April 2024 but denied being rude or abusive. He said he simply went and rang the doorbell, then went away again. He has not denied sending the text messages to GC.

The mother’s application to discharge the supervised contact order came before DJ Jenkins on 12 September 2024. He dismissed the mother’s application and continued the arrangements as set out by HHJ Roberts. He made a further order prohibiting the father from having indirect contact (including via PlayStation) with the children except as agreed in writing by the mother. He directed statements and set the matter down for final hearing on 17 and 18 November 2025.

What happened next is disputed. The father says he made many attempts to set up contact but the mother ignored him over and over again and so the contact never happened. The mother says the father was inconsistent, that he went to live in Country X (a long-haul flight awa) for three months with little notice resulting in the loss of the contact centre place, that he tried to set up contact in a different contact centre further away from the children’s home, that he then went to Europe for the summer. The father accepts going to Country X, and two much nearer foreign countries in the time-periods set out by the mother. It is clear that he was not here consistently following the order made by DJ Jenkins.

On 15 January 2025 the mother applied again to have the supervised contact order discharged because the father had moved to Country X. It is right that on 24 October 2024 the father emailed the mother saying “I have moved to Country X in order to pursue work and business opportunities”. She thought he had relocated.

On 29 April 2025 DJ Jenkins ordered an addendum s7 report.

The mother’s application to suspend contact came before DDJ Fenton on 20 May 2025 but the father was arrested at court before the hearing commenced. DDJ Fenton adjourned the mother’s application to be heard at final hearing.

The Cafcass addendum s7 report was filed on 22 September 2025. The children were not seen again because the father was bailed to live in County Y with conditions not to contact the mother or go to her home or place of work, and matters were very uncertain. At the time of writing the author was not able to make firm recommendations because there was outstanding information about the father’s impending prosecutions. That information has now been received as set out below. Cafcass could not endorse any spending time arrangements until that information was received and a further addendum s7 report completed.

The father is bailed to reside in County Y and has bail conditions not to attend the areas where the mother lives and works. It has been difficult to understand clearly what is happening in the criminal proceedings, but the parties agree that the father has been charged with harassment and leaving the victim in fear of violence against the mother and also with ABH in relation to the 2019/2020 assault. He has a hearing on 5 December 2025 on his application to strike out the harassment charge. There is a trial in relation to both matters in August 2026.

I have not seen the father’s PNC report but it is my understanding that he has a conviction fraud. In addition Cafcass have obtained updated police information which says that the father currently has impending prosecutions for

The hearing I have conducted is the two-day final hearing. The mother attended in person, but the father attended by videolink because bail conditions require him to reside in County Y. The mother was positioned in the court room so that she and the father could not see each other even when giving evidence. I had a bundle which had been prepared by the mother’s solicitors, and a statement filed by the father on the morning of the hearing. I allowed time for the mother to read it and give instructions on it. I also provided the orders which were missing from the bundle. I heard submissions from both parties and from Allison Silverstone of Cafcass as to the issues and how to proceed. I then heard oral evidence from both parties on the narrow issue of the mother’s engagement with the process of setting up contact, and whether she had allowed contact outside the court-ordered arrangements. Questions were asked on behalf of the father by his QLR, Maureen Obi-Ezekpazu. I did not hear submissions after the evidence except for a few closing remarks from the father, because I had heard all the issues ventilated very fully by that stage and no party wanted to say more. I am giving this judgment on the second day of the hearing having thought about it overnight.

This is not a fact-finding hearing. It has not been directed to be one, and no fact-finding directions (such as schedules and police disclosure) have been made. I am not tasked with deciding whether the father has been abusive to the mother, or whether he has harassed her. This is a welfare hearing. The issues I have to decide are whether the father should see the children and if so how. One of the arguments put forward against him seeing his children is that he has been inconsistent and would continue to be so, causing the children harm. He denies being inconsistent. I will therefore have to determine whether the father has been inconsistent.

In considering disputed matters of fact, the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities and the burden of proof is on the party making an allegation. I must have regard to each individual allegation but also the wider narrative as well.

In the welfare decisions that I make, the welfare of the child is my paramount consideration and I must take into account the factors of the welfare checklist at s1(3) of the Children Act 1989. Any order I make must be necessary and proportionate, and I must not make any order unless making an order is better for the child than making no order.

It is the father’s case that the mother allowed contact in 2023 and 2024, and that there is, as a result, no reason why she should not allow it now. The father points to excursions to the cinema and to ice-skating trips and one or two others. The mother accepts that they happened but says that they were always with the father’s brother or other family members present. She said he was not to be trusted on his own, but that she always wanted to facilitate safe contact with the father, and so agreed to family trips out as a way to achieve this.

I do not need to decide whether the paternal family were with the father or not during those contacts. What I can say is that it is clear the mother was happy to facilitate the contact at that stage (albeit on her case with safeguards in place). I do not find that she has historically been hostile to contact. In fact she has facilitated it.

The contested area is whether the father, or the mother, or neither, behaved unreasonably in trying to set up the contact. The main evidence is the oral evidence of the parties and the email trails. I begin with the email trails. The email trails provided are incomplete with many missing documents. These are the emails I have been provided with:

I also heard considerable oral evidence on this topic. It added little except to make it plain that the father felt that he had acted reasonably, done all that he could, tried numerous times to set up contact and that the mother had ignored him repeatedly and blocked his attempts. The mother for her part felt that she had never been against contact, and that it was the father who had sabotaged her attempts to set it up at Contact Centre A by going to Country X.

I come to the following conclusions based on the evidence above:

Overall, on the basis of my conclusions I come to the following views:

I turn then to the welfare checklist. The first factor is the wishes and feelings of the children. These were ascertained in 2023 by the Cafcass reporter. RE described her dad as very kind and said the worst thing about him was that he would take her to school late and she wished he would stop fighting with her mother. She wished she could stay with both parents and she would like to see her father again. She would like to spend Saturdays and Sundays with him. RE was 7 when she expressed those views.

GC also wanted to see his father some weekends but he did also speak about seeing his father slap his mother in the face three times, which made him (GC) cry. He had someone to talk to at school about sad things like this. GC was 9 when he expressed those views.

I also have the one supervised contact report which I have already described as showing a loving, warm and engaged relationship between the father and his children. They show no fear or reluctance to be with him and clearly enjoy their time with him.

All of that seems very clear, but I treat it with some caution because the views are now over 2 years old, and much has happened since then. In particular the father has been to the house in disputed circumstances, but if he did behave as the mother describes then the children may well have been frightened and that may have changed their feelings about contact. And I am told that GC was badly upset by his father’s PlayStation messages. I can well believe it. Those messages are not child-focussed, and in fact place the child centrally in the middle of the conflict. They seem to me very likely to cause emotional harm and I have no difficulty accepting the mother’s evidence that GC was very distressed by them. That too could have influenced his views about seeing his father.

The children are thriving and doing well at school. They have no additional needs. They do of course have a need to have a warm and bonded relationship with both parents if it is safe for them to do so.

The change of circumstances which is proposed is that supervised contact commence. The Cafcass reporter who prepared the original s7 report has left the service. The officer who completed the updated s7 report is on long-term sick leave. In the circumstances, Cafcass provided a Service Manager, Allison Silverstone, to assist with general welfare questions, albeit that she had not met the children. She was of the view that after such a long delay, and with the intervening incidents, the children would need some kind of preparation before they met their father again. She was also extremely concerned about the issue of consistency and said it could be extremely harmful for the children if contact were to start, or to be promised or prepared for, and then not to take place consistently. The children could experience feelings that it was something they had done wrong or that their father did not love them, and that could cause emotional harm.

The children are of mixed white and black Caribbean and African ethnicity. They lived with both parents until the parents separated in 2021. The evidence suggets that they had a close and warm relationship with both parents until that point.

If I do not order contact to take place between the children and their father there is a real risk of emotional harm to the children. They will lose the daily experience of his love and support and it is well documented that there are poorer outcomes for children growing up without fathers. I am particularly conscious of that in this case having read the contact notes which give a tiny snapshot of what this father could be to those children if contact were to take place and to be safe.

In thinking about the risks of supervised contact, I make it clear that I have not come to any view about the outstanding criminal matters, in particular whether the father has physically or emotionally abused the mother or harassed her. Leaving those matters to one side, the following risks remain.

There is no issue that the mother is able to meet the needs of the children. I am satisfied she would be able to meet their need for a relationship with the father if a safe and consistent way could be found to do that.

The father is able to meet many of the children’s needs. He can meet their needs for love and engagement and stimulation, but the mother has concerns about his ability to meet their need for safety. I share those concerns based on the photo of the father throwing RE high into the air whilst on his 17^th floor balcony. I am also concerned about the father letting the children play outside alone at 4 and 6 years old whilst being three floors away in a flat. Most crucially, I am concerned about the father’s ability to meet the children’s need for consistency, their need to be kept free of the adult conflict and his ability to respond to their true experiences.

I must balance the harm arising from directing supervised contact against the harm of not ordering supervised contact. If I direct no contact there is a risk of the children growing up with out the daily love and input of a father, and I do accept that that is emotionally harmful. However any decision that I make today does not have to be forever and I bear that in mind.

The risk of harm from ordering supervised contact is also in my view significant. Ms Silverstone was of the view that there was just too much uncertainty at the moment to allow contact to commence. There was the uncertainty from all the various criminal matters, and she said that even the criminal proceedings themselves would heighten things within the family, with the parents having to prepare to give evidence against each other. It would be a really difficult time to sustain contact if it was already in place, and even harder to try to start contact up after a long gap in those circumstances.

On balance I come to the view that this is not the right time for contact to be re-started. I agree with Ms Silverstone that there is just too much uncertainty about the future and too much risk that the contact would be inconsistent. That risk arises from the father’s previous inconsistent engagement and from the various criminal proceedings. I agree that the criminal proceedings will heighten tensions and they make it an inappropriate time to recommence contact. I agree that if the contact is inconsistent that will be emotionally harmful for the children particularly if they feel rejected or blame themselves. There is an unaddressed risk the father will involve the children in the conflict or that the children will pick up on his resentment and frustration about the mother.

For all those reasons, I decline to make an order for supervised contact today and I discharge the existing order for supervised contact. In considering the powers available to the court it seems to me that the welfare interests of the children will be served by my making an order for the father to be permitted to write to them, perhaps once a month, and to send them cards and gifts for birthdays and Christmases. All of his communications will need to be sent to a third party and I will direct the mother to provide the address of a third party within 14 days. The letters and cards will be read by the mother first, and will only be passed on if they are appropriate. The children may reply and if they want to their mother is expected to facilitate that, but there is no expectation that they will reply.

To help the father, I give him this guidance. His letters should not refer to the mother at all. They should not mention her. They should not give any reason for why the father is not seeing the children. They should simply contain messages of love and support, questions about how the children are doing at school and so on, and telling them small and child-appropriate bits of information about his own life. He can say that he is sorry it is not possible for them to see each other just now but that it does not mean he does not love them. It is not necessary to go beyond that.

For the future, it seems to me the way forward is to get all the criminal matters out of the way. If the father goes to prison, indirect contact will remain the only appropriate means of contact for the duration of his sentence. If he does not, and if all the criminal matters are resolved, and if he can commit to remaining in the UK consistently, then he should refer himself to the Triple P parenting programme. If he is found guilty of the assault or harassment he should undertake a Domestic Abuse Perpetrator’s Programme. The father has tried to do this already but has found that it is not possible to find one which is accredited by Respect. I accept that. He tried his best by undertaking what he told me was a 3-4 online course of reading and answering questions. That is not what the s7 recommendation envisaged, although I give the father credit for trying. The key thing about any suitable course is that it requires the perpetrator to admit that they are a perpetrator. The father has made no such admission and he may not in fact be a perpetrator. It will become clear at the ABH trial, if not in any other forum. If it does become clear by one route or another that the father is a perpetrator he will need to admit that before he will be accepted on any course. He should then try to find one. Ms Silverstone has explained that it will not be possible for it to be accredited by Respect but it should have the following characteristics

I set those characteristics out in full to help the father source an appropriate course if and when it is the right time for him to do so. I also make a direction giving permission for the father to disclose the papers in these proceedings, including this judgment, to any DAPP provider the father uses.

The father is of course prevented from contacting the mother by his bail conditions. If and when those come to an end I reinstate the direction of HHJ Roberts (paragraph 8(o) of her order of 17 April 2024) that the parties are only to communicate through a parenting app which the mother will choose and which will be at shared cost (if there is a cost). It is my judgment that this is necessary given the intemperate nature of some of the father’s emails and the need for there to be a full, complete and uneditable version of communications between the parties.

Ms Silverstone has noted that these proceedings have been ongoing for 3 years. She is clear that they need to stop. I agree. Proceedings bring stress, anxiety and a financial burden to families which make it difficult for parents and children to thrive. I am therefore making final orders today. These orders do not prevent the father coming back to court in due course, when all his criminal matters are resolved and he has done the appropriate courses to seek for direct contact to be reinstated. That may or may not happen. I can not rely on it. And so the orders I make today are final orders, bringing these proceedings to an end.