Cumbria County Council v AT
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Lieven DBE,Mrs Justice Lieven |
| Judgment Date | 16 November 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 3107 (Fam) |
| Date | 16 November 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No: BW10C00125 |
| Court | Family Division |
[2020] EWHC 3107 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mrs Justice Lieven
Case No: BW10C00125
and
and
Mr Michael Jones (instructed by Cumbria County Council) for the Applicant
Mr Darren Howe QC and Mr Sonny Flood (instructed by BSG Solicitors) for the First Respondent
Ms Ginny Whiteley and Mr Jack Humphreys (instructed by Makin Dixon) for the Second Respondent
Mr Patrick Gilmore (instructed by Bendles Solicitors) for the Third Respondent
Hearing dates: 26 – 30 October 2020
Approved Judgment
This case concerns T (“T” a boy aged 6, nearly 7). Cumbria County Council (“the LA”) apply for a care order in respect of T, who currently lives with his Mother, AT (“the Mother”). His Father is CB (“the Father”).
The central pleading in the LA's schedule of findings is that:
“…the allegations made by [T] in relation to the Father engaging in and facilitating acts of sexual abuse are untrue, and that they are the result of either (i) the Mother deliberately fabricating false allegations of sexual abuse and inducing [T] to make false allegations of sexual abuse against the Father, or (ii) the Mother having developed an unreasonable and false belief that [T] was sexually abused by the Father.”
The Local Authority's final position was an amalgam of the two alternatives as I explain below. The Local Authority does not seek any findings in relation to sexual abuse, its case being that an objective analysis of the evidence leads to a conclusion that the court could not find the allegations to be made out to the requisite standard of proof. The central issue in the case is therefore whether some or all of the allegations made by T have been caused by manipulation, pressure or coaching by the Mother, or whether she has developed an unreasonable belief that T has been sexually abused.
I am very grateful to all the counsel in this case. I should note that Mr Gilmore for the Guardian and Mr Jones for the Local Authority were advancing very similar arguments by the end of the hearing, which is why I do not refer separately to the Guardian's position.
In order to determine this matter, it is necessary to set out in considerable detail the history of the allegations and their precise timing. It is a feature of the case that the vast majority of the alleged allegations have been made by T to the Mother alone, which the Mother then passed on to various agencies. The Mother kept a diary or notes of what she says T said to her. What is set out below includes the Mother's evidence of the dates that she says T told her about the alleged abuse without any acceptance on behalf of the court as to the veracity of either the dates or of what the Mother alleges was said.
There were two incidents, one in March 2018 and one in 2020, which form the basis of allegations that the Mother makes against the Father. I heard evidence about them, and I will therefore make findings of fact. However, their significance is very much less than the issues around T's alleged allegations of sexual abuse. The Mother also alleges that the Father was responsible for T having small quantities of cocaine found in hair strand tests dating back to around September 2018.
Factual History
The Mother is 35 and the Father 53. They commenced a relationship in 2012 and T was born in November 2013. The Mother says they only lived together for a relatively short period and the relationship ended in 2016. The Mother had bought her own house and lived there with T. The Father had regular contact with T seeing him a few times during the week and staying overnight once a week. The parents lived very close to each other in a small community.
The Mother describes a history of domestic violence and the Father having serious issues with alcohol. The police were called out on a number of occasions. The Father accepts in his response to the Mother's allegations that there were arguments and that he sometimes behaved badly but claims the arguments were two-way. Despite these problems the Father did have regular contact with T and the Mother supported this contact.
There was an incident in March 2018 when the Father took T to a local pub, Pub X. I have heard a number of witnesses to what happened but ultimately the precise details of the fight that occurred are of no relevance to the principal issues in this case. However, the Mother has sought findings in relation to this incident. It seems the Father was looking after T that day and had taken him to the pub, as he often did. They met some friends and T went home with one of them. The Mother phoned the Father and asked for T to come back to her. When T was brought back to the pub, one of the Mother's friends, RP, said she would take him home. The Father declined to hand him over and an argument ensued. The Father says that he was quite happy for T to go to the Mother but felt RP was interfering. I have no doubt that the Father had had a good deal to drink and was belligerent at best and aggressive at worst. The Mother then arrived, and an altercation broke out at which the Father was to some degree physically aggressive to RP. The Father says RP “ran into his arm” but this seems somewhat unlikely. A friend of the Mother, PO, then intervened at which stage the Father punched him, PO then hit the Father who came off the worse from the encounter.
The point of relevance for me out of this incident is that T was in the pub for most of the altercation. The Father says that T and the Mother had left by the time PO and the Father started to fight but if this is correct it was only by a few seconds and certainly not because the Father was restraining himself until T had left. It is very troubling that a young child, 4 at the time, was exposed to drunken violence in this way. However, I note that neither parent appeared to be particularly troubled at the time and the Mother did not seek to prevent the Father's contact, him taking T to the pub, or raise concerns with social services.
It is relevant that in January 2018 an anonymous phone call was made to the NSPCC raising concerns that T was being exposed to domestic violence, emotional abuse and substance misuse. It now transpires that this call was from the Mother's sister.
I have seen a series of text messages through the summer of 2018 between the Mother and the Father. It is apparent from the messages that the court does not have all of the communications between the parents and, as the Mother says, there must have been other electronic devices on which they were communicating. However, what I can glean from the messages I have seen is that the Father and Mother got on reasonably amicably most of the time. The Father seems to have been keener to maintain a close relationship, but the Mother accepts that they were friendly, albeit the Father was highly unpredictable both in his behaviour and in his general attitude to her.
The Mother says that she had not been well earlier in the year and had got some support from the Father, including in him helping her with T. The Father suggested that he thought their relationship was restarting.
In early September 2018 particular tensions seem to have arisen. The Father had given the Mother money to spend in Wales on holiday with T, but then demanded repayment of this money. T was starting primary school in September and the texts suggest that the Father started to ask for more contact time with T and for “parity” in terms of contact. I accept the Mother's evidence that the Father's behaviour could be very erratic, and this seems to have been particularly the case in early September.
On 10 September T stayed overnight at the Father's home, according to the Mother without her agreement. T started primary school on the 11th.
On 14 September the texts suggest that there was some dispute over contact arrangements. T had just started at primary school and the Father attended the school asserting, correctly, that he held parental responsibility. The parents were spoken to by the Headteacher but there is no note of what was said. On the same day the Mother contacted Rochdale CSC reporting that the Father was becoming awkward over contact with T and saying that he will take him from school. The Mother did not feel that the Father would follow through with this but that it was him ‘sounding out’.
According to the Mother, at some point during the day she noticed T putting his hand up an adult friend's skirt. Later that day when putting T to bed he told her that he had a secret game with his daddy and he played with daddy's willy and his daddy had played with his. The Mother rang her friend, HS, and told her about T's conversation. She took a video of a conversation she then had with T about what he had said earlier. In this video the Mother is very clearly prompting T to repeat what she says T told her earlier. I do not in principle criticise the Mother for this as she had not been trained as to how to question a child. However, the video is essentially worthless in trying to establish either the truth of what T was alleging or, more importantly for my purposes, whether T had originally made the allegations at all, or whether he had been prompted into it by the Mother. What is clear from the video is that T does not appear to be in the least upset. I agree with Ms Whiteley that what T is describing sounds more like a silly game than a child recounting a frightening or worrisome...
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