PR v JS
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Roberts DBE,Mrs Justice Roberts |
| Judgment Date | 15 November 2019 |
| Neutral Citation | [2019] EWFC 69 |
| Court | Family Court |
| Date | 15 November 2019 |
| Docket Number | Case No: BH16P00114 |
[2019] EWFC 69
IN THE FAMILY COURT
SITTING IN BOURNEMOUTH
The Honourable Mrs Justice Roberts
Case No: BH16P00114
and
Miss Lucy Hendry (instructed by Laceys Solicitors) for the Applicant father
Miss Alev Giz (instructed by Philcox Gray) for the First Respondent mother
Mr Adam Langrish (instructed by Abels Solictors) for the child
(RE-OPENING OF FACT FINDING ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE)
Hearing dates: 2 nd to 6 th September and 9 th to 13 th September 2019
(Sent to Counsel on 7 October 2019)
(Formally handed down on 15 November 2019)
If this Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
THE HONOURABLE Mrs Justice Roberts DBE
This judgment was delivered in private. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published on condition that (irrespective of what is contained in the judgment) in any published version of the judgment the anonymity of the children and members of their family must be strictly preserved. All persons, including representatives of the media, must ensure that this condition is strictly complied with. Failure to do so will be a contempt of court. has been emailed to you it is to be treated as ‘read-only’. You should send any suggested amendments as a separate Word document.
Introduction
At the centre of this case is an eight year old child, T. She is a truly delightful little girl who has occupied centre stage in a long and difficult fact-finding hearing which has taken place over the last ten days. Whilst T was not present for any part of those two weeks (and indeed had no knowledge of the ongoing court proceedings involving her parents), she was very much a presence throughout as far as I was concerned. I watched a significant number of video and audio recordings taken during periods of contact between T and her father. I watched her spending time with members of the extended paternal family. I observed the recording of a full ABE interview 1 undertaken by police and social workers.
I had a wealth of written and oral evidence from her parents and those who interacted with her on a daily basis at school. I saw many pages of the notes and pictures she has written and drawn over the course of the last three years. I learned about the games she likes to play and her likes and dislikes in terms of food. I heard about her friends and the particular dynamics of some of those childhood relationships as they were developing during her early years at school. I heard from those who had observed contact between T and her father at a local contact centre over an extended period of time. I heard at considerable length from each of her parents as they spoke about their daughter in the context of the very detailed accounts which each gave in their written statements. I was struck by the enormous joy she brought to their lives before this family became enmeshed in these proceedings which have since had a devastating effect on their lives.
In this judgment, I am going to refer to the applicant and the first respondent as ‘the mother’ and ‘the father’. I do so to preserve the anonymity of these proceedings and the individual protection afforded to parents in proceedings such as these. In adopting these neutral generic labels, I have no intention of diluting the clear and very individual impressions which each left on me over the days I had to watch them sitting in court and giving their evidence over the course of many long hours in the witness box. Leaving aside the over-arching weft and weave of the chronology as it has developed, I was left with the clear impression of two very different human beings, albeit with a wealth of personal attributes and characteristics which make each, in his or her own different ways, complex individuals. They come from very different backgrounds with diverse personal experiences of life, family and career trajectories. They are, nonetheless, empathetic and interesting individuals who no doubt once felt a sufficient connection to embark on both marriage and the journey into parenthood. There is little doubt in my mind that T arrived into this family unit as a much loved and wanted child. It is important to set this out at the very beginning of what I suspect is likely to be a fairly lengthy judgment.
I have no doubt that T has continued to grow and flourish in the care of her mother during the intervening months and years. The father accepts that she is doing very well at school. However, the plain fact is that T has lost all direct contact with her father and has not seen him since May 2017, a very significant gap in her young life
to date. What little this father knows about his daughter's life comes to him indirectly through some limited contact he has had with her school. He has been permitted to send to T presents on her birthday and at Christmas but he has no means of communicating with her directly. Since contact was suspended, it appears he has never been provided with a photograph of his daughter. Throughout this time, both parents have been attempting to manage the litigation and the very significant psychological, emotional and financial pressures which it has brought in its wake. Between them, they have spent the best part of £300,000 on legal representationIt is therefore no surprise that, at times during the recent hearing, I observed each of these parents in a state of exhaustion and extreme distress as they relived the events which have brought about the current state of affairs.
Before I turn to those events, it is right to record at the outset what I said to the parties and their respective legal teams when the case was opened to me some two weeks ago. The system has let this child down badly. There have been long periods of delay between the various hearings which have only served to exacerbate the tensions between the parties and the distress felt by the father at his enforced estrangement from his only child. I recognise and accept that delay is an inevitable part of a court system which is all too often under-resourced in terms of judges and available court time in ever over-burdened court lists. That said, I would not be discharging my judicial function in this case if I did not observe at the outset that, whatever the cause, the resolution for this child and for these parents has been delayed for far too long.
At the heart of this case lie allegations that the father has sexually abused T. As time has gone on, her mother has become convinced that the allegations are true and that various things which T has said over the course which these investigations have taken are manifestations of the experiences which T has had whilst in the care of her father. He continues to deny that he has, or would, cause any harm to his child. He maintains, as he has done throughout, that the mother's allegations are completely untrue and that, in certain respects, she has deliberately fabricated them in order to “frame” him and thereby marginalise him from any effective role as T's father. He, for his part, has been entirely persuaded that the acrimonious breakdown of their short marriage led to a wish on the mother's part to control the extent to which he was able to continue his role as a separated parent to T. He told me that the passage of time has enabled him to think very carefully and deeply about what her underlying motives might be for this stance. His attitude may have softened slightly in some respects but he freely admits that at times “the red mist” of fury has coloured his approach to her conduct in this litigation. She, for her part, perceives her former husband as a highly intelligent and manipulative individual who is very able to “talk the talk” and beguile professionals (including judges, I suspect) into investing in his case as a victim of circumstances.
The essential litigation chronology
When difficulties first arose in the aftermath of these parents' separation, they agreed to enter mediation. When that process failed to produce a meeting of minds as to the appropriate arrangements for T, the father issued an application for contact. T was just over 5 1/2 years old at this point. Following allegations that she may have experienced some form of sexual abuse at the hands of her father, a fact-finding hearing was listed. That took place over the course of three days in July 2016. The judge received final written submissions from counsel and reserved his judgment. Within a matter of days after the close of the evidence, the mother's solicitors wrote to the judge to alert him to the fact that T had made “further significant and detailed disclosures” 2 to her mother. As a result the mother wished to make an application to reopen the evidence before a final decision was taken in relation to the truth or otherwise of the previous allegations she had relied on.
Following a further directions hearing, the judge listed a further two day hearing which took place at the end of December 2016. This was, in effect, the second stage of the first fact-finding hearing. Each parent gave oral evidence. Judgment was again reserved. It was handed down in written form at the end of January 2017. It comprised a full analysis of all the evidence which ran to 132 paragraphs over 31 pages. Although on that occasion, the judge was not provided with transcripts of all the evidence which had been given by various witnesses at the initial hearing in July 2016, he accepted the father's denials and found that the mother had failed to establish her allegations to the requisite standard, i.e. the balance of probabilities.
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