The survivor
I'm writing this all up now, to draw a line under it and to provide the government with some insight into what it is like to have a baby with an abuser, and how easy it is for the abuser to find a nice backup team in the UK family courts.
I blogged last year when I was in a bad way from the news that Judge Zara of Coventry Family Courts had allowed the stalker to have face to face contact with my beautiful innocent son. Here comes a summary of what I have been through this past ten plus years, and where I am at now.
My son's father is a drug addict. So was I when I met him. I stopped using almost ten years ago - despite him not because of him as he claims. Sexual abuse and coercive control and coercive rape were regular occurrences but at the time it didn't occur to me that it was wrong, even though it did not feel good. I walked on eggshells and tried to not rock to boat but this was normal for me and the people I had always loved and so like many victims, I minimised it and blamed myself. I found out I was pregnant in Asda toilets and I was so terrified to go home that I went to my boss's house instead.
Things got worse when I was pregnant, threatened to drag me down the abortion clinic and I tried to chuck him out but he wouldn't leave. After the police helped me make him leave, I let him back in after feeling sorry for him staying in his car and believing him when he said he would only stay until he found somewhere of his own.
My pregnancy was awful, the rows, the breast pain, the sickness. My teaching qualification grades decreased in line with the stress I had at home. He wouldn't leave and he never helped with anything round the house or the two big dogs so I had all that, plus work plus pregnancy and then I had to search for my own home, after it became clear he had no intention of leaving. I lost my job when they found out I was pregnant and fell into a deep dark depression where I planned to just end my life when my son came, because I would have been such a bad mother anyway just as two key people in my life - who were supposed to love me - told me.
My labour lasted six days and nine and a half hours but the moment I heard my son's first cry - after a stressful and difficult birth - was my most memorable life experience ever and every second I have spent with him is so wonderful. He is the most amazing human being I have ever met and deserves the very best in life.
At first I tried to give my sons father the benefit of the doubt - one last chance - as well as giving my son the opportunity to meet his paternal family. After endless abuse and police warnings to him - after my first non molestation order and a move into a safe house for me, I ceased contact with his father but still kept the channels of communication open with the paternal family in what I thought was the best interests of my son and they visited him without his father being present.
It was not long after our move to the safe house that I had the court papers for a child contact hearing. His father alleged that I was withholding and aggravating contact. This surprised me because I had evidence to the contrary and had indeed myself initiated safe contact through a contact centre, from which he was later banned for bad behaviour.
Thus began a further six years of abuse, facilitated by the family court system. He abused my solicitor by making plentiful requests for information, and each time, they had to send me the corresponding paperwork. Once you are "inside" the family court system there is no break from it, emotionally. I learned to fear letters through the door, which would trigger intense emotions of fear and dread. Every three months or so I was back and forth from court, following the lengthy procedures that have to be followed - hearings, schedules, cafcass reports, final hearings (that are often not the actual final hearings) that can go on for two days, sometimes with a days break in between.
For two weeks around the court dates my brain shut down. I was depressed, anxious, terrified. Conversations with my solicitor and reports would trigger fear and dread. On the day itself - after nights of stress-interrupted sleep - I would walk into court alone with no protection, and be sat in a waiting area where he also was. If I was lucky, the solicitor would find me a room but it was not until year five that I realised that I was entitled to have a support worker with me and video link or screens and separate entrances and waiting areas.
For four years I went to and fro, court in the system. He intimidated me in the waiting area, followed and tried to attack me outside of the court building. He got caught smoking weed inside the court building but every time I thought he had done enough and these proceedings would stop, they carried on regardless of his actions.
A final order came eventually with contact supervised by the paternal grandparents. I had to make the long journey to near where they lived and hand over to the grandmother in a park. I had to pay for my own petrol costs and was not working at that time. He paid the occasional £2.50 via the CSA but the courts don't take finances into consideration.
This contact arrangement went on for a year, with eight sessions taking place in that time. The grandparent was to request the contact when it suited her and I agreed to each one. Imagine my surprise when another contact application was made by father, again alleging that I was preventing contact and adding that I was abusing his mother as well.
Over the years, I had received a number of notifications from social services that contained various ludicrous accusations against me, made anonymously. It was distressing and confusing for me and I felt that I was being watched and by whom I did not know. During the course of the next year, it became clear that the source of these anonymous reports was my sons father. He openly admitted to my solicitor that he was stalking me, that he was reading everything I wrote on-line. By that time I was working as a blogger and social media manager and the response of the police was to tell me to shut down my on-line accounts.
The stalking escalated and I received a number of messages from him on-line and also a hand written one to my home address, confirming that he knew where I lived. I got a non molestation order again and he immediately breached it, resulting in my being awarded a lifetime restraining order. He breached this again several times including visiting my address and eventually got sent to prison. I am under no illusions that he is still stalking me today. The police are still not really understanding stalking, and cyber stalking and how damaging that is to a person and I was lucky to have a support team who knew about this kind of person and the predictors of future behaviour. But that is another story.
The family court proceedings were still ongoing, and to my horror the judge told me that the cyber stalking was my own fault for having an open profile - even though this was my job. A final order to give him supervised contact was made and I was devastated. An abuser and a stalker was being given unsupervised - though supported - contact with an innocent child with no provision for keeping me safe to and from the contact centre. By this time I had a support worker with me on court days and I felt safer there although just as sick with worry every time I entered that dreadful building.
He represented himself by then and his unevidenced lies went unchecked whilst my police evidence seemed to be dismissed as a hysterical woman deliberately causing "parental alienation". Cafcass were strongly against him having any kind of direct contact and the judge went against them. My world crashed. My experiences, my evidence and my strong gut feeling that my sons father was dangerous to us both, had been over ruled by a judge who had fallen for the "poor me" act that I myself had fallen for all those years ago.
He wasn't happy with the supervised contact order and escalated the stalking, on and offline and ended up serving time in prison for it.. I changed my name by deed poll and moved from the area. I had police alarms and my son used to tell me to remember to take my phone out with me. He got used to having police around. He was scared of his father but was forced to see him in a contact centre, supervised by social services.
Last year, after having to move, change my address, all of the above plus he admitted in court to the judge that he thought I was sending him coded messages via the internet and one more thing I cannot mention, I got a final no contact order. It was a relief, but not a victory. I just felt battered and drained and just utterly bewildered that it took such extreme circumstances before a judge would rule that a no contact order should be made.
It's the end of September now. We have been free for nine months and I have only just felt able to finish this blog post that I started in April. We are happy now and settled in our new home, though I still can't get use to my new name. It's only a label. My son thinks if we move house I will have to change it again. I reassure him we are staying here, but I don't feel confident in this reassurance.
I am happier than I have ever been. I can finally start to plan a life for me and my son. The perpetrator took ten years from me and him and the family courts made the first six years of life for my son and I unpredictable and full of non stop anxiety and fear. Even now, I cannot relax completely. I know he will still be watching me online, I will have a stalker for life. I dread the post and the next summons back to court. I try to live day by day, not to think too far into the future because if I get that letter I know what it will do to me, and how my life will stop all over again while I deal with courts and the PTSD. I can't rely on courts to keep use safe. The police even revealed my phone number last time. I don't trust them or the courts to keep us hidden and secure,
We have a new life and new friends but I can't give too much away, my old name, what has happened. It's too much still for me to talk about and I have no desire to share my story with people who cannot understand. So it's hard to form new relationships for me. Awkward. So even though it's maybe over, for me it has just paused.
If it goes back to court again my headstrong boy will make his feelings known and I will be blamed. He's been super clingy since we moved and we are both very security conscious. He won't tell strangers his real name. Our new life is lovely. But I expect the letter any time that will shatter us once again. We will never be free.
I blogged last year when I was in a bad way from the news that Judge Zara of Coventry Family Courts had allowed the stalker to have face to face contact with my beautiful innocent son. Here comes a summary of what I have been through this past ten plus years, and where I am at now.
My son's father is a drug addict. So was I when I met him. I stopped using almost ten years ago - despite him not because of him as he claims. Sexual abuse and coercive control and coercive rape were regular occurrences but at the time it didn't occur to me that it was wrong, even though it did not feel good. I walked on eggshells and tried to not rock to boat but this was normal for me and the people I had always loved and so like many victims, I minimised it and blamed myself. I found out I was pregnant in Asda toilets and I was so terrified to go home that I went to my boss's house instead.
Things got worse when I was pregnant, threatened to drag me down the abortion clinic and I tried to chuck him out but he wouldn't leave. After the police helped me make him leave, I let him back in after feeling sorry for him staying in his car and believing him when he said he would only stay until he found somewhere of his own.
My pregnancy was awful, the rows, the breast pain, the sickness. My teaching qualification grades decreased in line with the stress I had at home. He wouldn't leave and he never helped with anything round the house or the two big dogs so I had all that, plus work plus pregnancy and then I had to search for my own home, after it became clear he had no intention of leaving. I lost my job when they found out I was pregnant and fell into a deep dark depression where I planned to just end my life when my son came, because I would have been such a bad mother anyway just as two key people in my life - who were supposed to love me - told me.
My labour lasted six days and nine and a half hours but the moment I heard my son's first cry - after a stressful and difficult birth - was my most memorable life experience ever and every second I have spent with him is so wonderful. He is the most amazing human being I have ever met and deserves the very best in life.
At first I tried to give my sons father the benefit of the doubt - one last chance - as well as giving my son the opportunity to meet his paternal family. After endless abuse and police warnings to him - after my first non molestation order and a move into a safe house for me, I ceased contact with his father but still kept the channels of communication open with the paternal family in what I thought was the best interests of my son and they visited him without his father being present.
It was not long after our move to the safe house that I had the court papers for a child contact hearing. His father alleged that I was withholding and aggravating contact. This surprised me because I had evidence to the contrary and had indeed myself initiated safe contact through a contact centre, from which he was later banned for bad behaviour.
Thus began a further six years of abuse, facilitated by the family court system. He abused my solicitor by making plentiful requests for information, and each time, they had to send me the corresponding paperwork. Once you are "inside" the family court system there is no break from it, emotionally. I learned to fear letters through the door, which would trigger intense emotions of fear and dread. Every three months or so I was back and forth from court, following the lengthy procedures that have to be followed - hearings, schedules, cafcass reports, final hearings (that are often not the actual final hearings) that can go on for two days, sometimes with a days break in between.
For two weeks around the court dates my brain shut down. I was depressed, anxious, terrified. Conversations with my solicitor and reports would trigger fear and dread. On the day itself - after nights of stress-interrupted sleep - I would walk into court alone with no protection, and be sat in a waiting area where he also was. If I was lucky, the solicitor would find me a room but it was not until year five that I realised that I was entitled to have a support worker with me and video link or screens and separate entrances and waiting areas.
For four years I went to and fro, court in the system. He intimidated me in the waiting area, followed and tried to attack me outside of the court building. He got caught smoking weed inside the court building but every time I thought he had done enough and these proceedings would stop, they carried on regardless of his actions.
A final order came eventually with contact supervised by the paternal grandparents. I had to make the long journey to near where they lived and hand over to the grandmother in a park. I had to pay for my own petrol costs and was not working at that time. He paid the occasional £2.50 via the CSA but the courts don't take finances into consideration.
This contact arrangement went on for a year, with eight sessions taking place in that time. The grandparent was to request the contact when it suited her and I agreed to each one. Imagine my surprise when another contact application was made by father, again alleging that I was preventing contact and adding that I was abusing his mother as well.
Over the years, I had received a number of notifications from social services that contained various ludicrous accusations against me, made anonymously. It was distressing and confusing for me and I felt that I was being watched and by whom I did not know. During the course of the next year, it became clear that the source of these anonymous reports was my sons father. He openly admitted to my solicitor that he was stalking me, that he was reading everything I wrote on-line. By that time I was working as a blogger and social media manager and the response of the police was to tell me to shut down my on-line accounts.
The stalking escalated and I received a number of messages from him on-line and also a hand written one to my home address, confirming that he knew where I lived. I got a non molestation order again and he immediately breached it, resulting in my being awarded a lifetime restraining order. He breached this again several times including visiting my address and eventually got sent to prison. I am under no illusions that he is still stalking me today. The police are still not really understanding stalking, and cyber stalking and how damaging that is to a person and I was lucky to have a support team who knew about this kind of person and the predictors of future behaviour. But that is another story.
The family court proceedings were still ongoing, and to my horror the judge told me that the cyber stalking was my own fault for having an open profile - even though this was my job. A final order to give him supervised contact was made and I was devastated. An abuser and a stalker was being given unsupervised - though supported - contact with an innocent child with no provision for keeping me safe to and from the contact centre. By this time I had a support worker with me on court days and I felt safer there although just as sick with worry every time I entered that dreadful building.
He represented himself by then and his unevidenced lies went unchecked whilst my police evidence seemed to be dismissed as a hysterical woman deliberately causing "parental alienation". Cafcass were strongly against him having any kind of direct contact and the judge went against them. My world crashed. My experiences, my evidence and my strong gut feeling that my sons father was dangerous to us both, had been over ruled by a judge who had fallen for the "poor me" act that I myself had fallen for all those years ago.
He wasn't happy with the supervised contact order and escalated the stalking, on and offline and ended up serving time in prison for it.. I changed my name by deed poll and moved from the area. I had police alarms and my son used to tell me to remember to take my phone out with me. He got used to having police around. He was scared of his father but was forced to see him in a contact centre, supervised by social services.
Last year, after having to move, change my address, all of the above plus he admitted in court to the judge that he thought I was sending him coded messages via the internet and one more thing I cannot mention, I got a final no contact order. It was a relief, but not a victory. I just felt battered and drained and just utterly bewildered that it took such extreme circumstances before a judge would rule that a no contact order should be made.
It's the end of September now. We have been free for nine months and I have only just felt able to finish this blog post that I started in April. We are happy now and settled in our new home, though I still can't get use to my new name. It's only a label. My son thinks if we move house I will have to change it again. I reassure him we are staying here, but I don't feel confident in this reassurance.
I am happier than I have ever been. I can finally start to plan a life for me and my son. The perpetrator took ten years from me and him and the family courts made the first six years of life for my son and I unpredictable and full of non stop anxiety and fear. Even now, I cannot relax completely. I know he will still be watching me online, I will have a stalker for life. I dread the post and the next summons back to court. I try to live day by day, not to think too far into the future because if I get that letter I know what it will do to me, and how my life will stop all over again while I deal with courts and the PTSD. I can't rely on courts to keep use safe. The police even revealed my phone number last time. I don't trust them or the courts to keep us hidden and secure,
We have a new life and new friends but I can't give too much away, my old name, what has happened. It's too much still for me to talk about and I have no desire to share my story with people who cannot understand. So it's hard to form new relationships for me. Awkward. So even though it's maybe over, for me it has just paused.
If it goes back to court again my headstrong boy will make his feelings known and I will be blamed. He's been super clingy since we moved and we are both very security conscious. He won't tell strangers his real name. Our new life is lovely. But I expect the letter any time that will shatter us once again. We will never be free.
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