Vigreux v Michel

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeLord Justice Thorpe,Lord Justice Wall,or
Judgment Date18 May 2006
Neutral Citation[2006] EWCA Civ 630
Date18 May 2006
CourtCourt of Appeal (Civil Division)
Docket NumberCase No: B4/2006/0426

[2006] EWCA Civ 630

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE

COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)

ON APPEAL FROM HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE FAMILY DIVISION

Mr Justice McFARLANE

FD05P01863

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

Before:

Lord Justice Thorpe and

Lord Justice Wall

Case No: B4/2006/0426

Between:
Joelle Vigreux
Appellant
and
Patrick Jacques Robert
1st Respondent
and
Pierre-Mathieu Bernard Rene Michel
2nd Respondent

Mr M Scott-Manderson (instructed by White & Sherwin) for the Appellant

Mr M Hosford-Tanner (instructed by Percy Short & Cuthbert) for the 1st Respondent

Mr H Setright QC (instructed by Reynolds Porter Chamberlain ) for the 2nd Respondent

Lord Justice Thorpe
1

In this appeal the proceedings are governed by the Child Abduction and Custody Act 1985, incorporating the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention and Council Regulation (EC) No. 2201/2003 concerning Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Matrimonial Matters and in matter of Parental Responsibility. This Regulation, which came into force on the 1 st March 2005, has come to be known in this jurisdiction as Brussels II Revised. The appeal is significant because it is the first case governed by the Regulation to reach this court.

2

Very little of the background is material. I take it from the judgment of McFarlane J. The parties were not married but had a long relationship during the course of which their son, Pierre-Mathieu, was born on the 14 th August 1991. He is therefore now fourteen and three-quarters. The couple and their son are French through and through and following their separation in 2001 proceedings were initiated in the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Melun, the first order being made on the 15 th January 2002. It was a conventional order: joint parental responsibility, residence to the mother, contact to the father. The order resulted from contested proceedings, the judge having the benefit of a welfare report prepared by Madame Ratcliffe. She recorded a very strong attachment between Pierre-Mathieu and his father. The parties were restricted from leaving France without the other's express consent and neither was permitted to leave France with Pierre-Mathieu without the other's express consent.

3

It seems that the father appealed that order but left for England prior to the hearing in the Cour d' Appel de Paris on the 15 th October 2003. The father's appeal was dismissed and his contact order was not varied to reflect the fact of his departure.

4

In 2004 it seems that the father's only substantial contact was in the summer when Pierre-Mathieu spent several weeks in England. The visit was agreed.

5

The father's next contact was for a weekend at a hotel in France prior to the issue of the father's variation application in the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Versailles. Ominously the application was apparently made by the father and Pierre-Mathieu jointly, the statement in support being jointly signed.

6

Four days later the father was arrested at the Gare de Lyon for assaulting two police officers. For this assault he was sentenced in his absence on the 28 th June by the Criminal Court in Paris to one month's imprisonment and a fine. The sentence has never been served.

7

The culmination came in August 2005. The father went to Paris ostensibly for an agreed period of staying contact in France. In reality he and Pierre-Mathieu had pre-planned an escape to England. They left on the 14 th August. The removal was deceitful, a breach of the mother's custody rights and a flagrant breach of the orders of the French court.

8

The father's conduct is aggravated by his beliefs, which at least he makes no effort to disguise. These beliefs are revealed by his writings. The excerpts which follow were selected by McFarlane J for the purposes of his judgment. An email from the father to Pierre-Mathieu of 18 th December 2004 included:—

"Let's be assured of the support of this government of Chirac which is solely surrounded by Jews who suck the blood of humanity, feeding from all racial and political hatred. Let's bump off Chirac and his secret police and get ready."

9

On 10 th April 2005 he wrote to Pierre-Mathieu:—

"In France (the French judges) are bandits and layabouts, small-time poxy revolutionaries, Jews playing the martyr whom you have to make walk over hot coals before they will do anything. I am therefore going to doorstep the family court judge directly this week in Versailles to ask if he personally knows St Peter's successor in his department and whether he has received fresh orders from Goebbels, the former justice minister, from the time of Vichy."

10

On 3 rd May 2005 the first email to Pierre-Mathieu included:—

"You must ask them every day at breakfast when you get up, 'let me live with my father. Give me my money and I will leave'. Keep saying that each time they talk to you and say it everyone."

11

The second email of the same day included this: -

"It's under way. I am waiting. They will see at the end of the current holidays. I told you to instruct a lawyer for the children in Versailles. You have to request the lawyer for the children in writing. I have sent off the request to leave the country for their holidays. You have to take the request from your mother and me to the town hall. You must collect the authorisation to leave the country from the town hall and post it to me. Then you say that you have mislaid it and you ask for another one for them. Then I can come and collect you. Pack a small suitcase and stay in the UK afterwards whilst the request is put before the judges in France. You must write a letter to the children's judge before you leave saying that you want to live with me in the UK and give a copy to the police."

12

The joint statement to support the application of the 12 th May 2005 contained the following passages:—

"Why does Pierre prefer to be with his father? The father took three years' paternity leave at his birth to look after him; the mother was working nights in Paris. Consequently, bottle feeds, nappy changes, stories and walks came from the father. The minor Pierre lived in the father's home from his birth until the High Court in Melun ordered a feminist activist called Ratcliffe to prepare a demoralising welfare report. This nationalist Jewess then peppered her report with false litanies and refused to correct her forgery in writing before submitting it to this court. This wicked Zionist mole who in auto-conclave passed a vote of confidence in the custody of Pierre to his mother, a fascist of the same species, turned everything upside down. The Family Judge of Melun, abusively made up of women only, more capable of pronouncing administrative orders than subscribing to a civil contract, plucks away at pending files in massive doses, only re-reading the last line of administrative violence through huge motivation to separate father and children before they go into the extermination camp of legal murder."

"The mother, an out-and-out bitch, has well prepared and planned his kidnapping advance. She is advised by her Jewish in-laws and by the feminist advisers of the Moissy Police."

13

On any view these writings demonstrate a complete disregard for his son's emotional wellbeing and development as well as a deluded and poisoned mind.

14

I turn now to the proceedings in this jurisdiction. The mother applied to the French Central Authority on the 26 th August 2005. The papers were sent to the English Central Authority on the 16 th September 2005. On 23 rd September 2005 proceedings were issued under the Child Abduction & Custody Act 1985 and the inherent jurisdiction. On the same day Bodey J at a without notice hearing made holding orders which were served on the father together with the remaining papers by 29 th September 2005. The case was listed for hearing on notice on the 4 th October 2005 but was not reached that day. On the following day Bracewell J gave directions. On the 17 th October 2005 a contested application for separate representation for Pierre-Mathieu was granted by Hedley J. On the 11 th November 2005 the case was listed for final hearing but was not reached. Baron J re-listed for final hearing on the 28 th November. On that day the case was again not reached. Baron J sought in vain for a further date that term. Further directions were given by Her Honour Judge Mayer on the 1 st December 2005 listing the final hearing for the 12 th January 2006 and providing for a psychologist to report on Pierre-Mathieu's objection by that date. On the 12 th January 2006 the report was not available and Kirkwood J, in a finely balanced decision, adjourned the trial to 13 th February 2006 to enable Dr Grania Clarke to report in the interim. The trial, without oral evidence, was before McFarlane J on the 13 th and 14 th February 2006, his judgment being given on the following morning. Thus the duration of the proceedings from commencement on the 23 rd September 2005 to judgment on the 15 th February 2006 was nearly five months.

15

This was not an exceptional case and compliance with the Regulation required completion by about the 3 rd November 2005. Given that disregard of our obligations it perhaps not surprising that the mother returned to the Cour d' Appel de Versailles on the 7 th December 2005. At a hearing at which the father was neither present not represented the court, having regard to the gravity of the abduction, granted sole parental authority to the mother. The order continued: -

"Given the particularly conflicting background between both parents and the writings of the father, it is ordered that a psychiatric report be prepared and that judgment be reserved in the meantime as to...

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