A Father v A Mother (Sexual Abuse – procedural fairness)

This is a case about S, a girl who is 6 years old. Her father has applied for a child arrangements order and a prohibited steps order in relation to her. S’s mother is the respondent to the application. She also has a younger brother, a full sibling, who is called by one name by his mother and a different name by his father. I shall call him V for the sake of simplicity. That is what his mother calls him and he lives with her. He is now 3. Curiously he is not the subject of his father’s application, which applies only to S.

The parties met in 2016 and began a relationship. They did not live together at that stage. In 2018 the mother became pregnant with S and in 2019 the father moved in with her. She was at the time already living with her three older children from a previous relationship. The mother says that when the father came into her life he presented very well, he was very hands on and was everything she was looking for in a partner both with her own children and with S. He helped with all the children, bathing them, dressing them, looking after them. Her son from a previous relationship in particular became very fond of him and looked up to him. When the father moved in, it is the mother’s case that he found it irritating actually having to live with them all, and he withdrew his support to the extent that her son in particular would complain and feel hurt. Matters deteriorated and there were arguments. They came to a head on X date 2022 when the father left the home and did not return.

6 days after X date, the father collected S for two hours of contact time with her. He took her out into the community on his own. He says they went to a chicken shop and a pudding restaurant and it is agreed that she was exhausted and asleep when she got home which was probably some time around 8 or 9pm. She was put straight to bed without waking up.

The next day the mother says she found S in front of a mirror stroking her hair and saying “I am a mess”, and saying that her father had told her her hair was a mess. Later the same day (there is some confusion about the dates in the mother’s statement but I am satisfied that is a simple error in the mother’s statement and it is her case that this happened later on the same day) the mother found S leaning forward in a sexually provocative way and saying “Daddy told me to bend like this”. Her mother asked her whether she had secrets and S said “I have secrets with my daddy” and said that her father had told her she could not tell her mother what they were.

There followed more examples of what the mother says was sexualised behaviour and assertions about secrets with daddy to the point that the mother sought advice from the GP. The GP made a referral to social services who on 14 July 2022 held a multi-agency strategy discussion. The multi-agency team arranged a child protection medical with a consultant paediatrician. The mother told her she had always felt S’s vaginal appearance looked a little different from that of her other daughters at a similar age. On examination the paediatrician found that S’s hymen had an unusual appearance which she could not categorically say was not a normal variant. In her view it was either a normal variant or it could be seen as a result of repeated rubbing in the context of sexual abuse which would imply repeated episodes of abuse. She discussed the images with two other paediatric consultants at different hospitals and their joint conclusion, as recorded in the police disclosure on 7 February 2023, was that “although the hymenal width was very thin, it was smooth and there was no evidence of injury, so this is probably a normal variant and so does not give evidence to support a suspicion of sexual abuse”. She went on to say that sexual abuse that did not involve touching would not be expected to leave any abnormality, so the examination did not refute the possibility that abuse could have taken place. She concludes by saying “From this information there is no supporting medical evidence to suggest that an offence has taken place”.

Meanwhile, while these investigations were taking place, the mother had stopped contact. The father therefore made his application to this court on 18 January 2024. The mother put forward her concerns about sexual abuse and the father denied them. On 23 May 2024 the court decided there needed to be a fact-finding hearing and made directions. The fact-finding hearing was originally listed for one day on 29 November 2024 with a pre-trial review (PTR) on 4 November. At the PTR, HHJ Marin noted that the case was not ready for a fact-finding hearing noting that there was no police disclosure, no schedule of allegations and no response. He made further directions, and having looked again at the time estimate required listed the fact-finding for the next available 3-day slot. That was over a year later on 24 November 2025, and that is the hearing I have now conducted. There has been inordinate delay in this case. The child has not now seen her father for over 3½ years and the allegations have still not been determined.

I have now conducted the fact-finding hearing which I did over the course of three days. The mother, having made allegations of abuse against the father, is entitled to Legal Aid funding and she has instructed solicitors to help her prepare her case, and has been represented by experienced counsel, Mahnoor Javed. The father, being accused of abuse of the mother and serious sexual abuse of the child, is not entitled to legal aid and so he has been a litigant in person and has had to prepare his own case as best he can. On the first day of the hearing a Qualified Legal Representative appeared to question the mother on his behalf. The QLR was Mehtab Malhotra. She was of great assistance, but of course she did not represent the father and was appointed not to assist him but to protect the mother, in view of her allegations and the requirements of PD3AA and 3BB. She was not there to help him make his submissions at the end of the evidence. The family court is used to dealing with this problem and allowances were made as much as possible, but it is always a problem and in this case it was particularly stark. It has been very difficult, and some might say impossible, to conduct a fair trial when there is such a fine balance in the evidence and such inequality of arms.

The mother was provided with screens in court and separate waiting rooms for the duration of the hearing. Both parents engaged consistently and well and both made a good impression.

The issues I have to decide are whether the father has sexually abused S, and whether he has verbally abused the mother by calling her degrading names and shouting in her face.

The burden of proof is on the party making the allegations. Findings of fact must be based on evidence, including inferences that can properly be drawn from the evidence, and not on suspicion or speculation (A (A Child) (No. 2) [2011] EWCA Civ 12.)

The Court must decide disputed issues of fact by applying the civil standard of proof. Thus a disputed allegation only becomes a proven fact if it is more probable than not that the disputed event occurred. In Re B [2008] UKHL 35, Lord Hoffman said at paragraph13 of the judgment: ‘I think that the time has come to say, once and for all, that there is only one civil standard of proof and that is proof that the fact in issue more probably occurred than not’.

The Court must find either that a disputed event did occur or that it did not. The Court cannot sit on the fence. Baroness Hale said as follows at paragraph 32 of the Re B judgment:

There is a need for a marriage of all evidence before a court reaches a conclusion on a disputed issue of fact, as stated by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss DBE in Re T (Children) [2004] 2 FLR 838. She said,

In principle the approach to fact finding in private family proceedings between parents should be the same as the approach in care proceedings. However, as Baroness Hale cautioned in Re B at [29]:

S1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 defines domestic abuse as follows:

However, I remind myself that ‘not all directive, assertive, stubborn or selfish behaviour, will be ‘abuse’ in the context of proceedings concerning the welfare of a child; much will turn on the intention of the perpetrator of the alleged abuse and on the harmful impact of the behaviour’ (paragraph 32 Re H-N and Others (children) (domestic abuse: finding of fact hearings) [2021] EWCA Civ 448).

The overarching allegation is that in 2022 S was displaying sexualised behaviour which was caused by sexual abuse by the father. The father denies sexually abusing S. The determination of this issue needs to be broken down into two stages. First, I must determine what S was doing and saying in 2022 and secondly I must determine whether those things, taken together, are probative of sexual abuse by the father. I start with step one, what she was doing and saying.

There are three main strands of evidence about what S was doing and saying. They are reports by the mother, social services records (including police disclosure) and S’s ABE interviews. Taking the mother’s accounts first, suspicions of sexual abuse awoke in her mind a week after X date 2022. The date is pinpointed because of surrounding events. The parties had split up on X date 2022. The mother had given birth to V only five weeks before and the mother said she was surprised when the father walked out. It was not what she expected. X date 2022 was a Monday. The parties agree that the father had contact with S the following Sunday. It was the day after the contact, a week after X date 2022, when the mother noticed unusual behaviour and in her mind linked it to what might have happened at contact the day before. The first thing I note is that the mother’s starting point was to allow contact. She was not, therefore, hostile to the father at that point.

The behaviour which the mother says she saw was that on the day after contact, in other words a week after X date, 2022 S was leaning forward in a sexually suggestive way. When her mother asked her “why are you bending like that” she replied “Daddy told me to bend like this”. The mother asked S “do you have secrets?” and S replied “I have secrets with my daddy”. The mother probed further and asked “What secrets”. S said “my dad says I cannot tell you”. The mother gave a consistent account about the secrets in her police statement on 20 October 2022.

A few days later the mother was washing V on his changing mat. The mat has pictures of penguins on it. The mother asked S “does baby bird have secrets with daddy bird?” referencing the birds on the mat. S replied “Yes”. S then got on the mother’s bed, flat on her back and lifted her legs up in the air and towards her head, exposing her private parts and said “that’s the secret”. The account in the mother’s police statement is slightly different because in it she says that S told her she “did things” with her dad before demonstrating by lying on her back with her legs up. That is echoed in the mother’s conversation with the Cafcass reporter in March 2024 when she said that when S was lying on her back on the bed with her legs up she said that they “do stuff”. She did not say who “they” were. The account of S talking about “doing things” or “doing stuff” is missing from the mother’s other accounts, but on each occasion the mother was clearly describing the same incident she has described in her statement to this court and in her discussions with the GP and social workers.

On a further occasion the mother says S was in bed with her with the duvet pulled up. The mother noticed S fidgeting and pulled the covers back to see what she was doing. She found she had her fingers in her knickers. The mother told her off and asked her why she was doing that. S said “that’s part of my secret with daddy. Daddy told me to put my fingers there.” She was pointing towards the opening of her vagina.

Two further incidents are recorded by the mother, both involving S rubbing her vagina when getting out of the bath. The first was before the parties separated, at a time when they were all still living together. The father was sitting on the toilet, S was in the bath and the mother was also in the room. The mother says that S stood up in the bath and with both hands, palms open, started rubbing her vagina in an upward motion. The mother asked her what she was doing and where she got it from. Before she could answer the father shouted at her to stop it and that was the end of it. The mother did not think anything of it at the time, but with hindsight now believes the father was shutting S down, fearful of what answer she might give to her mother’s questions.

The mother reported to her GP another similar incident at a later date when S was rubbing her vagina when getting out of the bath in front of her older siblings. The mother says she shouted at the siblings, concerned that they may have shown her or taught her something they should not, but records that S said “you need to tell dad to stop telling me to do this”. A similar account was given by the mother to the police in her police statement, and the account is corroborated by a statement given by the mother’s aunt to the police on 12 January 2023. In that statement the mother’s aunt says she was on the phone to the mother on an unknown date in 2022. During the conversation she heard the mother say words to the effect of “what are you doing? Who has taught you that?”. The mother’s aunt thinks this was in relation to something S was doing, although the aunt does not say how or why she thinks that. She of course did not see anything herself, because she was on the telephone. The mother’s aunt says there was then a slight pause and she heard the mother challenge the other children who were present “if they had taught you that”. Upon challenging, the mother’s aunt says “I think S, I heard S say words to the effect ‘you need to talk to [father]’.” The name given is the father’s name. This evidence corroborates the mother’s account as far as it goes, but the mother’s aunt was not cross examined so I did not hear the evidence tested, and furthermore her evidence is necessarily limited by the fact that she did not see anything herself, and much of it is supposition. I accept her evidence but can give it little weight for those reasons.

Those then are the six incidents relied on by the mother. They are (1) the provocative leaning, (2) S saying she had secrets with her Daddy which he had told her not to tell, (3) S lying on her back with her legs up saying this was the secret, (4) S being found with her fingers in her knickers, and (5) and 6) S twice coming out of the bath and rubbing her vagina, on one of the occasions saying the mother needed to talk to the father about it.

In oral evidence the mother confirmed these accounts and there were no material discrepancies nor anything in the mother’s demeanour to suggest she was making the allegations up. In my view the mother’s evidence was coherent and consistent and there was no obvious bitterness or hostility to contact: in fact quite the reverse. The mother spoke sadly and fondly of the time when she and the father were first together and was clearly able to remember vividly that he was everything she was looking for. She pointed out that she has always facilitated contact for her older three children with their father, even when it meant taking them abroad to see him. That evidence was not challenged. And she asked why would she stop a child seeing their father? She said time spent with the father would benefit her (the mother) because it would be time to herself, and further she said it would enrich the children. There was no hint of hostility or reservation about this evidence.

The second strand of evidence comes from social services. It is clear that the Strategy Discussion on 14 July 2022 had before it a report from the mother’s GP. The record of the meeting states that the mother had originally attended the GP in March 2022 due to being concerned about S’s vaginal appearance: she felt that it was gaping. The record states “Mother said that she noticed a difference in her daughter’s vaginal appearance after she had spent the weekend at her father’s place”. I pause to note that it is agreed between the parties that S never had spent the weekend at her father’s place. The father is concerned that the mother said this to the GP in order to mislead and to strengthen the allegations of sexual abuse. The mother says she did not say it. It is not repeated by the mother to any other professional and it forms no part of the mother’s narrative. It is part of the mother’s narrative that she became worried about sexual abuse after the session of contact on 6 days after X date 2022 and she may well have said that to the GP. I am inclined to think that something of that sort may have been said and this is a mistake in the recording. It does not appear to have affected the outcome of the medical view which I have given above.

It is recorded in the strategy meeting minutes that the mother then called the GP surgery back on 4 July 2022 and said that S was “climbing” her teddy bears and putting a lot of things in her mouth. When asked “where did you learn that from?” she said her father. These are different allegations from the ones in the mother’s statement but they do not contradict them.

Following the strategy discussion a Child Protection Medical was arranged on 10 August 2022. The background to the case was obtained from the police and the social worker and then confirmed with the mother. It was said the mother had always felt S’s vaginal appearance was different from that of the mother’s other daughters at the same age, and that the mother had asked if S had secrets. S said she had. The incident of coming out of the bath and rubbing her vagina in front of the siblings is mentioned, as is S putting toys in her mouth as if simulating oral sex. The incident of lying on her back and putting her legs in the air is also mentioned. If all this had come directly from the mother it would be evidence of her consistency of narrative: however it is not clear what came from her and what from the police and the social worker so I can come to no conclusions other than that the narrative which was put to the paediatrician was consistent with the narrative put to the court. As I have already set out above the conclusion of the paediatrician, once she had consulted with two other colleagues was that “there was no evidence of injury, so this is probably a normal variant and so does not give evidence to support a suspicion of sexual abuse”.

Social services then carried out a Child and Family Assessment, which was completed on 2 September 2022. Within that assessment social workers spoke directly to S, and also to her older half-siblings. This is what is recorded in relation to the direct work with S:

“S said she loves her daddy and that he is nice and cooks lots of food for her like burgers and chips. S could not identify something that daddy does that she does not like. S then stated that she doesn’t like when daddy shows her “tun-tun”. S’s demeanour changed when speaking about this and she had an upset face and her arms crossed. S could not describe what this meant and when asked would change the subject. S acknowledged that her and daddy have secrets together however would not share them”.

It is common ground that “tuntun” is the word the mother has taught her children to refer to the vaginal area. S’s conversation with the social worker is in my view puzzling. I do not know what S means when she says she does not like daddy showing her tuntun, but what I note is that S is putting tuntun and daddy into the reply when asked what daddy does that she doesn’t like. That would appear to corroborate the mother’s concerns. And the description of her demeanour changing and changing the subject corroborates the mother’s narrative of her being evasive when asked about this subject.

The Child and Family Assessment concluded that the only concern was the sexual abuse allegations. There were no other concerns with the mother’s parenting. Because the mother was not allowing contact with the father and because the police investigation was ongoing, the appropriate level of support was felt to be a child in need plan and that was put in place.

The third strand of evidence is S’s ABE interview. I have watched it all. It is skilfully managed by the intermediary and all of her skill is needed because S is a child who wants to play and who does not want to be interviewed. Her answers range from sensible to chaotic, sometimes saying one thing, sometimes another. For example, there is an exchange about a dog called where she clearly indicates twice that the dog lives at her house, then in the next question accepts that the dog lives next door. In another exchange she is asked whether anything has ever gone into her tuntun and she says yes, a drying thing and then she says “and this is a blade” picking something up, and then when asked again says hair went in her tuntun and she weed it out. The drying thing might, conceivably, be toilet paper, the blade is irrelevant, but as far as weeing out the hair is concerned it is impossible to know whether this is an attempt to convey something real or whether it is just nonsense. These exchanges are, in my view, characteristic of the whole ABE interview and as a result there is limited value in fixating on individual answers without looking at the context.

In the interview S is asked many questions about things happening to her tuntun. She is asked who is allowed to touch it and she says no one, and that her daddy has told her that. She is asked whether anyone has ever touched it and she doesn’t answer. She says instead that “we don’t touch the wee”. Then she is asked “who has touched your tuntun”. In my view that is a leading question because it has not been established that anyone has, and that of course diminishes the value of the answer. The answer is “No one. I didn’t let my daddy do it to me”. The mother says that shows he tried. The father says it shows that she is aware everyone is asking her about her daddy and she is making it clear that her daddy didn’t touch her there. Either interpretation is in my view possible.

S then says that she touched her daddy’s tuntun with her feet. There are obvious problems with this statement. First of all, her daddy doesn’t have a tuntun, and so in order to accept S’s statement I would have to accept that she was adapting the word to refer to male genitalia rather than female, perhaps because she didn’t have a word for male genitalia. And whilst that is possible, I would have to accept that she used the same word for two very different things. It might be supposed that if she saw her father’s genitalia the last thing she would call it would be a “tuntun” since it would have been so very different from what she knew a tuntun to be.

There are further difficulties with S’s statement. She is asked to say more about it and she says “he did pee on my face and he did got it out of my eye”. It is not clear from that whether that is part of the same incident or a different one, but a few moments later she clarifies that he peed in the toilet and he accidentally peed in her eye. And then she becomes distracted and that line of questioning is lost. I am left with no clear sense of what happened, if anything.

Later in the interview S is asked if anybody has ever touched her tuntun and she says “Yeah…my daddy”. That, on the face of it, is a clear indictment from the child’s own mouth. However in my view it is not so clear. Firstly, that answer comes after she has been asked three times in a row whether anyone has touched her tuntun. Her first two answers were clearly rejected since the question came again. It might well be said that by the time she was asked the third time she was trying another answer to see if it was what was wanted. Secondly when asked how it happened she said that “He weed in my one in my tuntun and then I weed it back in his tuntun”. She clarifies that she weed it not on his tuntun but inside it. Again it is impossible to tell what this might mean. There has been a lot of talk during the interview about tuntuns and weeing and S would by now be well aware that weeing and tuntuns are what these interviewers are interested in. Her answer incorporates those two subjects without making any obvious sense. It is hard to see how she could have weed inside his tuntun, whatever she meant by “his tuntun”. This answer seems to me to be nonsense in a desire to please, and that must taint the previous answer also, that her daddy had touched her tuntun, given as I have already said under the pressure of repeated questioning.

The interview then enters something of a period of chaos as S talks about playing at a neighbour’s house the day before and it is necessary then to play a game of throwing and catching in order to have a break, after which in answer to questions S says she likes playing with her father and playing hop sticks with him, and she does not like it when he puts things into her hand like cheese. She then talks about herself and her father “biting off their butts” which again seems to make no sense.

Towards the end of the interview the interviewers return again to the main question, and ask again “has daddy ever touched your tuntun”. That is clearly a leading question which in my view so undermines any answer from a three year old as to remove its probative value. Three year olds are incredibly suggestible. In fact S answers the first time “yeah” and then goes into another incomprehensible description of something to do with glue. Clearly that answer has not satisfied the interviewers because they ask again “has daddy ever touched your tuntun”. Again she says “Yeah” and then describes an incident in which he squeezed lemon in her eye. After that, the interviewers ask a third time “has daddy ever touched your tuntun”. This third time S simply changes the subject. And then a fourth time, they come back and say “You said that daddy touched your tuntun”. And S replies by nodding, and talks about him putting “something in her book and now it’s gone soaky and soaky and got mould”. She clarifies that it was the Princess one and now it’s gone mouldy and it’s in the bin, and that her mum “got some other ones and marmalade book and now it’s gone in the bin”. Again, it is just not possible to understand what any of this means. The interviewers ask a fifth time, Has anybody touched your tuntun” and she says “yeah”. They immediately ask her again a sixth time and she shakes her head and says “no”.

My overall impression of the interview is of a young child knowing that she has to say something about her daddy and about tuntuns in order to get out of the room, but not knowing what to say. The things she does say are nonsensical and contradictory. I do not find that S substantiated the allegations in the ABE interview despite sustained pressure at the end to do so.

I come then to the question of whether I find that S has displayed sexualised behaviour in 2022 as described by the mother. I find that the mother has been broadly consistent and certainly not inconsistent in the accounts that she has given over a period of years to the GP, to social services, to the police, to Cafcass and to this court. I do not find that there is any evidence of a hostile or bitter motive on the part of the mother in putting forward these allegations. She has if anything been reluctant to accuse the father and sought advice from the GP rather than doing anything else. And the mother’s account of S saying she had secrets with her daddy is corroborated by S saying the same thing to the social worker during direct work. I come to the conclusion that the mother is not making the allegations up. She is reporting what she has seen and heard.

The next question then is whether those behaviours and statements on the part of S lead to a conclusion that it is more likely than not that she was sexually abused by her father.

I take first the provocative leaning. The mother has not been clear what she means by provocative leaning. Whatever she means I cannot see that that, by itself, is evidence of sexual abuse, although it might, depending on the context, be evidence of sexual grooming. In this case the allegation is too vague for me to make a finding about that based on this account alone.

Secondly, there is the question of S having secrets with daddy. There is, in my view, a major problem with this allegation and that is that the whole notion of secrets was, on the mother’s own account, first introduced by the mother. She was the one who first asked “do you have secrets with daddy?”. That is a leading question which in my view critically undermines the answer. S said yes, but I do not find that answer persuasive because of the nature of the question. Having said yes, she has had to stick with that answer. On the one hand it may be concerning that she then maintained that she could not share the secret. On the other hand, maybe she had no secret to share. Because of the way in which the whole concept of secrets was raised, I do not find this, on its own, probative of sexual abuse.

Thirdly there is the incident of S lying on her back with her legs folded over her, displaying her private area and saying “this is the secret”. Certainly one interpretation of that is of a child who has been put into a sexual position and then told to keep it secret. But the position itself is highly ambiguous. Small children have no self-consciousness about taking up ungainly positions. They fold themselves up and roll around in all sorts of ways. Lying on her back with her legs pressed against her chest could just be what she was doing at that point, and the subject of “secrets” had, again, been brought up by the mother, not by S. There is no evidence that the mother raised it for any reason other than being worried, but nevertheless the fact that she did raise it seems to me indicative of what was going on in the mother’s mind rather than in S’s mind. S goes to roll on the bed and simply responds to the subject her mother has raised. Again, on its own, I do not find this behaviour probative of sexual abuse.

I must consider whether S said during that incident that she “did things” or “did stuff”. Those words are missing from the earliest accounts given to the GP and the paediatrician, and only appear for the first time some 8 months after the event. In oral evidence the mother was not sure whether she had said them or not. It seems to me there is some doubt that they were said and I cannot rely on them and so they do not change my view of the incident.

Fourthly there is the incident of S being found with her fingers in her knickers and then saying “that’s part of my secret with daddy” whilst pointing to the opening of her vagina. As far as I can tell, there was no leading question leading to that declaration and the words and action taken together are less ambiguous. To my mind this is the most concerning allegation so far. I am however conscious that the father has had no legal representation to take forward his case in challenging the mother’s account of this incident, for example to ask how she had recorded S’s comment, when she had first written it down, whether she might have got the words wrong, to suggest alternative meanings and contexts, to clarify what questions the mother asked, what the aftermath was and what actions were taken. The father had a QLR and I make no complaint of her. But her role is to ask the father’s questions, not to represent him or take his case forward. It is not the same. A QLR who does not represent her client has not helped to shape the case or write the statements or given legal advice as to the questions and legal challenges which can be made, and cannot take forward the client’s case in the robust and full way of a legal representative such as, in this case, the mother’s counsel on the other side. It is not clear to me that that is fair. Those are the caveats I raise in relation to this allegation. But as things stand, the incident appears clear and is in my view capable of being probative of sexual abuse.

Fifthly there is the first of the bath incidents, when the father was sitting on the toilet. Much was made about whether or not he was using the toilet at the time. He could not remember but if he was he said he was using it sitting down and his genitalia were not on display. It was suggested that his genitalia would have been on display as he took his trousers down to sit and that this was part of his pattern of grooming, to get S used to seeing his genitals. Many questions were asked about whether he was in the habit of going to the toilet with S in the room and he said that he did do that. It was suggested that that was inappropriate. He said when he was caring for her on his own it was sometimes the safest option, rather than leaving her alone somewhere. I accept the father’s evidence on that point. Parents of very young children often have to take them into cubicles with them or have to have them with them in the bathroom at home to prevent distress and accidents. It is part of life. I do not criticise the father for that. As for the incident itself, it is said the father shouted at S before she could answer the mother’s question and that the father did that to shut S down for fear of what she might say. Whilst that is one possible explanation, another explanation would be that the father was simply reacting instinctively. I note that S made no mention of the father during that incident. The behaviour could have stemmed from sexual abuse from the father but could equally have stemmed from something she had seen on YouTube or been told by her siblings. I have no way of knowing and I do not find that the father’s actions were so odd as to require any explanation other than that he wanted her to stop doing what she was doing.

Sixthly there is the second bath incident. The mother and her aunt both record a similar sequence of events with S saying “you need to tell dad to stop telling me to do this”. I have already said that I cannot give great weight to the evidence of the mother’s aunt. I am also troubled by this reported comment as it makes little sense in the context. By the time this incident had happened the father had moved out and was not seeing S. He was not telling her anything at that point. It makes no sense for S to say that the mother needed to tell dad to stop telling her anything.

Looking at each of the incidents individually the only one which seems to me to be capable of proving sexual abuse is the incident with S’s fingers in her knickers. I need, in addition to look at the whole picture and not just the individual incidents. The whole picture is a picture of one truly concerning incident and comment and a number of other ambiguous incidents which could be interpreted as evidence of sexual abuse, or not. In the balance supporting the making of findings of sexual abuse is the father’s decision to pursue contact with S only, and not with L. As the mother put it, he seems only interested in his “girlchild” and she wonders why that is. In oral evidence the father said it was because when he issued his application V was a baby and breastfeeding and he did not want to take him away from his mother. He said that now that V was three he would be interested in seeing him. He has not, however, amended his application to include V despite having had plenty of time to do so. The mother remains concerned about his motives for applying to see S only. I give very little, if any, weight to this line of argument as it seems to me speculation contrary to Re A (ibid). I do however take note that on the other side of the balance is the father’s track record of having been to some extent involved in the lives of six young children and there never being any suggestion of any sexual abuse before. By the mother’s own account the father bathed, dressed and helped bring up the youngest two of her three older children. Both of those children were interviewed as part of the Child and Family Assessment and both said they liked the father to start with but he became mean, and the mother’s son expressed disappointment and feeling left out as the father changed and withdrew. Neither of them expressed any issues that could be described as safeguarding issues, and neither of them mentioned anything sexual at all. In this side of the balance also is the medical evidence which does not support findings of sexual abuse.

The evidence in my view is very finely balanced. A great deal turns on the incident with S’s fingers in her knickers. In the end I cannot see any reason to depart from the natural meaning of the words and the gesture. The natural meaning is that S does have a secret with her daddy and it is to do with her genitalia. She was not, during the incident, asked what her secret is and she seems to be volunteering information about it. And again the natural meaning of a “secret with her daddy” involving genitalia is that there is some form of sexual abuse. It is difficult to think what else it could mean. The father changed her nappies and I have asked myself whether she could have been referring to some innocent activity like that, but I cannot see why that would be a “secret” nor why it would involve S putting her fingers on her genitals. I come to the view that I must make the finding of sexual abuse based on the incident of S having her fingers in her knickers and saying it was part of her secret with her daddy. That finding, once made, sheds light on the other incidents. None of them did I find probative individually of sexual abuse, but if sexual abuse did occur (as I now find that it did) each of the other incidents takes on a different character. The facts of the individual incidents have been set out above and I will not repeat them here, but they speak for themselves. If there has been sexual abuse then the balance of probability tips in each case to S really having a secret, to the secret really relating to her private area as shown to her mother on the bed, and to daddy teaching her to rub her vagina and to bend provocatively. If sexual abuse has taken place (as I have found it has) it is difficult to see why each of these things should not be taken at face value. I therefore find that in the light of the finding I have made, the other incidents are also more likely than not to relate to sexual abuse or grooming. I therefore make the overall finding that in 2022 S was displaying sexualised behaviour which was caused by sexual abuse by her father. It is not a comfortable finding, given the fine balance of the evidence and the lack of representation of the father but it is the finding that I make.

I turn then to the other two allegations. The first is that the father called the respondent various degrading names and walked up to her and shouted in her face while she sat holding the 10-day old V on the bed. The mother says that the father told her that “even cockroaches have babies”. The father admits making that comment in the heat of an argument but is at pains to say he never called the mother a cockroach.

Both parties agree that following the birth of V there were significant arguments. The biggest argument was about the naming of V. The mother’s older son’s name begins with V, and she and the children (in particular her older son) wanted to name the baby with a name beginning with that letter. All the girls had names beginning with S and her son was looking forward to a brother with a “V name”. There is a dispute about whether the father was willing to go along with this or not. The mother says he was initially fine about it and proposed a “V name”. He later changed his mind saying the “V name” was something the mother and her previous partner had chosen and he wanted to choose something else, and proposed a different name which did not begin with V. The mother says she offered to accept that name and adopt her name of choice as a middle name, but the father refused to have the “V name” as a middle name. The father does not necessarily agree with that narrative. What is agreed is that the matter blew up into an irreconcilable divide. The father describes it as the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused him finally to leave.

From all of this I derive the proposition that the parties’ relationship was in serious trouble following the birth of V. There were indeed arguments and it is clear that the father did make the comment about cockroaches to the mother. That was obviously rude and unkind but it does not in my view meet the definition of “domestic abuse” set out in statute and quoted at the start of this judgment. Not all directive, assertive, stubborn or selfish behaviour will be abuse in the context of Children Act proceedings. In my view this was behaviour which left much to be desired, but the mother has given no further details other than that the children came upstairs to see if she was alright after the father shouted at her. He should not have shouted at her and I have no doubt that it was not his finest moment. However it seems to me to have been situational, to do with the breakup of the relationship and at a time of particularly high tension. I do not consider it proportionate for it to lead me to make a finding of domestic abuse against the father.