“Please let me just hug them – I will only be with them for a minute”….
“What are you doing here? ” my husband’s nanny asks with a shocked look on her face.
I look at my daughter’s face, whom I haven’t seen for a while. She is unsure: it’s clear she wants to hug me, but she also knows how angry her nanny will be if she does…Her hand is held very firmly by the nanny’s hand so she cannot let go to come to me.
“I was in the school for a meeting. I’ve only just noticed you go by. I didn’t know you were here.” I find myself stammering, shaking and apologising for my very presence in my own children’s school to a nanny who has no parental rights over my children – she is their nanny not their parent. Why am I apologising? But I know the power she has to make life even more difficult for me whilst the children are in her care, so I avoid a row and swallow my anger. Like a mother bear, I want to protect my children from another female who is trying to step between me and my children so that I can’t get to them. I hope instead that she will see how desperate the children and I are to give each other a quick hug.
“We won’t be long” I plead, so longing just to hold them for a few seconds.

“NO, we are going now. There is no time for a hug. We’re leaving. Come on kids” Her face is taught with anger, showing clearly how much she dislikes this situation. She is entirely dismissive of me, the words almost spat out with no effort to apologise for her inability to be accomodating of my request. She could stop for a few minutes if she had wanted to. There was no serious deadline she had to meet. So why can’t or why won’t she permit this little request? Do I also detect a certain look on her face as she grabs hold of both children’s hands and whisks them off to the exit of the school? I don’t know. All I know is that they are looking back at me, clearly distressed, while I have to just stand there looking into their dear faces, whilst another woman takes my children out of the door without a second’s feeling for mine and my children’s plight. I feel a huge surge of strong feelings: anger, resentment, frustration, shock, hurt. The very core of my motherly instinct is ripped. This stranger to our family, no relation even, now has the children she’s always wanted. At 50, she has never been married nor has had her own children – something which has deeply upset her. Instead, she’s found another way of having children: taking mine instead.

It’s just a dream, I tell myself when I wake crying. Except it’s been the pattern of these dreams for quite some time now. The dreams are always the same: I am back in my own home, one that she now lives in. I am unwelcome in their even though, in real life, I am still the owner of that home. In this dream home, she is the one who is in charge of my children. In these dreams, I am sometimes a ghost, sometimes I am merely invisible, a mere on-looker whilst all my children, the nanny, my ex husband, his guests ignore me as they simply look through me. When I am visible in these dreams, I am constantly reaching out to my children in all manner of ways: I am trying to feed them, I am trying to hug them, to talk to them, to protect them from a stranger……….always trying to be close to them. Invariably, I am met with palpable hostility from both the nanny and my ex husband – “why is she still here, when this is our territory now” is the unspoken question that hangs in the air. There is no attempt on their part to be hospitable, accomodating, kind or compassionate for the children’s plight or mine. They make it clear that I am now in their territory, their home, their space, their rules. I stand in my own home, with my own children and am made to feel like I’m the intruder, the unwelcome pest.

Although these are my dreams, these dreams are simply a representation of what is happening in real life, in my real situation, in my real experience of how my ex husband and his nanny treat me. The discomfort  in his employee’s face is painful and hurtful to see and experience and I ask myself what I might have done, or what he might have told her, for her to treat me in this way. She treats me like I’m an irrelevance, like she’s the mother and I’m her employee and one that she doesn’t like at that. Ocasionally I stand up for myself and tell her not to treat me in this manner, but there is never an apology on her part, nor any change in her behaviour.

I bitterly resent this. I carried those children in my womb for 9 months. I gave birth, screaming with the pain and bear permanent physical scars from the births. My eldest had to be pulled out as she’d got stuck and I live with the scars of that birth today – a constant reminder of her bond to me. I breast-fed each child, waking several times a night to feed them, comfort them, nurse them, sleep with them to keep them calm. I slept beside their beds in hospital as each of them had their various baby illnesses: diabetes, tonsilitis, pneumonia, meningitis. I held them when they were scared in hospital, comforted them till they fell asleep in my arms, argued with the doctors when I instinctively knew that they were not giving my son the right treatment when he was vomiting with his diabetes, spending hours by their sides unable to sleep whilst their bodies fought off various infections.

Now, in my dreams, my children are being told by their nanny to call her “mum” – to hear them say that about another woman who has come into their lives and taken over, rips me to the core. When my youngest daughter is with me, she often calls me my nanny’s name and call’s her nanny’s name mum, before quickly correcting herself. For this child to have another woman in my shoes is clearly confusing for her and hugely upsetting for me. I remind the children that they only ever have one mum and one dad. Nobody else in their lives will ever be their mum or dad. Other people can play those roles and provide huge support, kindness and comfort as did my step father who has looked after me since I was five. But he is not my dad – my real father is my dad. I love my step father as much as I love my dad, but that doesn’t make him my dad.

There is a bond which is never broken between parent and child and when a stranger comes into the children’s lives and tries to break that bond, it is the cruelist and most hurtful thing they can try to do to both the child and the parent. But this behaviour comes from a deep insecurity, selfishness and unkindness on the part of the person breaking that bond. Because they don’t have their own children, they seek to take on somebody else’s. It happens in many animal species where one animal who has no children, tries to take another animal’s offspring. We are just animals too fundamentally. What is playing out in front of my eyes is another female animal trying to steal my children.

My children are hurt, angry and resentful about the way this nanny treats me, but what can they do? They are only children with no power over the way the grown ups in their lives are behaving. They tell me they desperately want to be looked after by their mum rather than by a nanny but there is nothing they can do about it. They are forced to accept her even when their dad is supposed to be looking after them. He employs her even at the weekends and during his holidays with them. She even spent Christmas with them! Even when he came to collect the children from me, he brought the nanny with him on the 4 hour journey! It’s as if he is treating her like his surrogate wife even though she already has her own 8 year long relationship with another man and she is certainly not my ex husband’s type…..I don’t understand why he is doing this other than to think that he doesn’t like being on his own, either with himself or when he’s with the children. He has to have a woman around…..

When will these dreams ever stop? Even the sleeping tablets that have been prescribed for me by my psychiatris for post traumatic stress disorder brought on by having my children taken from me, don’t stop these dreams from penetrating my refuge of sleep. Sleep is meant to be my place of healing all the hurt in my daily life, all the stresses that we all go through, yet mine just brings further haunting, further distress that lingers throughout the day, playing on my mind as I go through each dream scene feeling each hurt afresh.

Oh God, if you ever listen to any of my prayers, listen to this one: “Please let these dreams stop and let me heal…”

Wow! Did I hear my children burst with their feelings tonight! They started by saying that they didn’t want to leave me after our weekend together. Once again, they talked about how unhappy they are about not seeing more of me. They started to talk about how they felt about the Judge and her decision to “take away their mum from them.” They were angry and resentful about their situation and were clear that neither the Judge nor CAFCASS had considered them or their feelings at all. So they expressed their feelings like this:

My youngest daughter thought that the Judge should be sent to hell where she would make the Judge sit in a bath full of spiders…clearly, for her, that was the most appalling punishment that she could think of. For her, the thought that someone she hated would be subjected to what they might fear most, surrounded by what they feared most and in a place (hell) where they would have to stay forever being surrounded by what they feared most was the maximum punishment she could inflict.  Mmmmm…….that’s anger for you.

My eldest child started by asking whether she is now old enough to be sent to jail.  I could see that she was grinning mischievously so played along with her. I told her that, under UK law, a child of 10 was considered legally capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong and could therefore be found guilty of a crime. She then asked whether, if she was sent to jail, she would be sent to jail with all the adults so I explained that children are sent to a young offenders prison, not with the adults. I asked her why she wanted to know.  She said because she has been wanting to go into the Court and thump the judge really, really hard whilst shouting at the same time “How would you feel if your children were taken away from you! You’re not the one who’s suffering! We are! How would your children feel if they only saw their mum every other weekend! You should have come to our home and see how we are suffering without our mum. You’re not the one having to cope with it all, we are! “

She said that she is very angry still with what has happened. She said that the Judge didn’t come to their home to see how they lived and what their home was like, that the judge didn’t meet them or talk to them or even ask them how they felt about their mum or their dad or what living arrangements they would like. They were just ignored and nobody came to talk to them. She said that she hated CAFCASS too: “They should have a young person to talk to us, someone who understands us, not an old person who can’t listen properly! The person should understand how a child thinks about things.”

My son also described, in graphic detail, all the things that he would like to do to the Judge too; these were all about physically hurting the Judge: thumping, throwing things at her, hurting her REALLY BADLY. He also wanted to shout at her, telling her how angry he was about having him mum taken away from him.

They asked whether they would get into trouble if they did this. I said that yes, what they wanted to do was known in criminal law as “assault” and was a crime which people can be put into prison for. I explained that “assault” was a crime in which a person hurts someone else physically, emotionally or psychologically. I stressed that no-one should ever hurt anyone else unless it was self defense if someone was attacking them. They then wanted to know if brothers and sisters were put into jail when they hurt in each in their fights. I said that yes, when they were older, then if they hurt each other badly, they could be found guilty of assault. Their logic continued: “But all brothers and sisters hurt each other, mummy. They all fight each other when they’re angry with each other; they thump and kick each other. It’s normal so why is it a crime?” I had to explain that, one of the jobs of a parent is to teach children not to hurt each other either physically, emotionally or psychologically. It is a crime because no person should hurt another person EVER even if they are in the same family. They then said: ” but if we are angry with each other, or we get hit, then we hit back. What the Judge has done to us is to hurt us, so why can’t we thump or kick her back? She has really hurt us and now she’s just gone back to her own house and left us hurt.”

I was very struck by the intensity of their anger and the way in which children could think of the most appropriate punishment for someone who they feel has ruined their lives. They have often expressed how angry they are with the Judge and CAFCASS, repeatedly saying how much they want to hurt these people as retribution for hurting them so much by taking away their mum. It is that simple to them: they are hurting, so they want to hurt the people who, in their eyes, have hurt them so much.

I am a religious person and also a pragmatic person. I teach them about the bible and that God wouldn’t want us to hurt each other; that he loves us all, that we are all his children (even the Judge and CAFCASS) and that therefore he doesn’t want us hurting each other. He teaches us to be kind to each other and to love each other. It is wrong to go around hurting people and I stress that “hurt” includes emotional and psychological hurt too. I also teach them about what the law says and that we cannot behave in any way we want to as we all need to learn to live alongside each other.

The quote that I repeat to them is “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” (Ghandi).

The question they are raising is fundamental: “Who is hurting who?” Who is hurting (emotionally and psychologically) who? If hurting another is a crime and is against the teaching of a Christian society, how do the children understand that, despite the fact that they are being fundamentally hurt, the law states that it is acceptable. I had to explain that there are different areas of law: one law states that it is a crime to hurt another, but another law states that it is not a crime to hurt a child because the law states that “it is acting in the best interests of the child”. The law that governs the decisions about who they should live with tells the Judge what to do and the Judge is following what the law states. The law states that the Judge can overrule a child’s feelings if the Judge deems that the child is better looked after by one person than another even if that is not what the child wants. The fact that they are hurt badly by this decision, does not make it against the law. The crime of “assault” is not applicable here as another law has taken its place.  The children found this, not surprisingly, hard to understand.

I had to explain that, sometimes, the rules that we live by are not always straightforward and, sometimes those rules don’t always make sense because they are so complicated and different rules apply in different situations. The adults make these rules because they understand the different situations. This idea is very hard for them to understand; their view of life is very simple.

The talk from some of the visitors to my site, is that I am the one who is ruining my children’s lives and yet my children’s view is that it is the Judge and CAFCASS who have ruined their lives, not me. You might say that my children wouldn’t want to tell me that they think I am responsible in order to save my feelings; although there may be times when this could be the case, I know my children very well. They are typically brutally honest with me and have no trouble at all telling me when they think I have done something wrong, or hurtful, or careless or not thinking about their feelings. We have a very open communication system and I actively encourage them to tell me openly, honestly and frankly what they are thinking and feeling. I tell them that, unless we know what each other thinks and feels, we cannot make things right for each other. I repeatedly stress that sometimes we are not aware of how we might be upsetting someone and that we are not mind readers so the only way we can understand how each other is feeling is to tell each other. I also tell each of them to “hear each other out” so that we can all tell each other our own side of any situation without leaping to conclusions and judgements and to take it in turns to speak and to listen.

I told them that the Judge made her decision based on only what she heard and that she didn’t hear everything that she needed to hear. I told them that I agreed with them that, the most important people to hear from was the children, yet she didn’t hear them. (I explained that it was CAFCASS’s job to hear the children and then relay that to the Judge). I then told them that she didn’t hear from anyone in my family, or any of my friends and that, if she had, she would have heard “the other side of the story”. Because she didn’t hear both sides properly, she made the decision without hearing all the things that the children would have said.

My eldest daughter then went on to say what she wanted to happen; she said that she thought that a fairer arrangement was to live one week with me, followed by one week with Daddy, one week with mummy etc. They all thought that this would be a good solution, my other daughter saying 50:50…. I told them that mummy and daddy can choose to agree on whatever arrangement we want and voluntarily put aside the current court order if we wish to. The issue is that we would both have to agree on a workable alternative. I would be prepared to try another arrangement if that is the arrangement that the children would prefer. The challenge, of course, is getting my ex to listen to what the children want and putting his own feelings/wishes to one side to enable him to listen with an open mind…

This case is just so horrible to read. Of course, I am the first to say that I haven’t read the details of the case as I won’t be able to find them given the confidentiality/secrecy of the courts, but I am inclined to believe many of the facts of this case. Equally I appreciate that this account is one-sided – I have not heard the father’s story and we all know that there are 2 sides to every story. So please read on bearing that in mind….

Essentially, a mother has lost custody of her children to a man with a vast number of criminal convictions (including sexual abuse) who is dying from AIDS. The father claimed that the mother was discriminating against him on the basis of his AIDS/HIV and the courts agreed with him. The fact that he is dying from his illness raises questions of how well he can parent the child in the mean time. He’s been given 7 years to live and the child is only 7. Her daughter is only allowed supervised visits with her mum despite having reported that the daughter is being sexually assaulted in her father’s house.

This is an interesting dilemma. I fundamentally believe that no-one should be discriminated against and I find discrimination against HIV sufferers to be totally inhumane. I have watched a dying man in an AIDS hospice and felt nothing but profound sympathy for those sufferers. There is no doubt that a parent can parent regardless of AIDS. However, there comes a time when the effect of an illness on a person’s ability to provide care for a child becomes an issue of concern. If a person has become so ill that they can no longer function properly, then how can they be capable of parenting? If they are no longer capable, then surely the other parent should step in in preference to some other carer UNLESS that other parent is deemed incapable.

So what are the comparables between this case and a case involving a parent with a mental illness? A mental illness, if properly controlled, means a parent can live a normal life. They won’t die from their illness and it won’t deteriorate unless the sufferer refuses medication. Someone dying from AIDS is highly likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and stress and be unable to hold down a job once the illness becomes severe.

Yet to refuse an AIDS sufferer parenting on the basis of their illness was held by this court to be discriminatory and yet the judge in my case was able to decide that I couldn’t be the full time carer due to my Bipolar illness.

Can anyone help me to see this differently? Am I missing a point here? These questions are not sarcastic – I genuinely would like to hear other peoples views on this…

The mother claims that her troubles have arisen from challenging the court system – the more she has challenged them, the more they put their foot down and refuse to help protect the child.

When does a parent’s determination to protect their child, turn into “trouble making” in the eyes of the Court (or a “vexacious litigant” in our English court speak). She has been told that she is simply refusing to accept the court’s decision and therefore she should go and get help with coming to terms with the decision.

I often wonder whether any of the family court judges have lost custody of their own children. If they have, I doubt very much that they would maintain that a parent should be critised for “refusing to accept” a decision which the parent knows goes against the well-being of their child. The fundamental parental instinct is to protect your child from any harm, including psychological and emotional harm. If a parent believes that their child is suffering from the result of not seeing them (which has been proven many times in research), then they will fight, argue and refuse to give up until they know their child is being looked after properly.

Surely, the Judges realise that this is simply a fundamental human response to their child’s distress? Do they honestly think that a parent will give up?

If the Judges themselves could talk from personal experience of how they came to terms with having their children taken away, then their assertions about a parent needing to accept a decision may become more credible.

Until such a time, I am inclined to think that every parent will continue to fight for what they believe is the right solution for their child. They will put their child’s wishes paramount to a judges disapproval.

Do read the following account from this mother – it’s heart rending….

http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/2003-abuse/abuse.pdf

I can’t bear this. The emptiness of an empty house; I was goint to call it a “home” but without my children, the place I’m living in doesn’t feel like home. No laughing, no shouting, no arguing, no giggling, no crying, no recorder playing, no arguing over the computer, no one asking for a cuggle, or a snuggle, or a hug or telling me that they love me (”to the moon and stars and back againm,mummy”) that they love me, that they miss me, that they want to sit next to me at the dinner table, that they want to tell me about their day at school, about the fights in the playground, about the lesson they found boring, about the exciting new game they’ve invented, about the picture they’ve just drawn, about the pig they’re making in pottery, about the lunch that they didn’t like, about the cheating in the maths test…………………

No little person creeping into my room in the depths of night scared from a nightmare and wanting to snuggle up to mummy to comfort them and take away their fear.

Nobody running into my room in the morning to tell me that they managed to tie their shoe laces for the first time, that they’ve got themselves dressed without being asked, to ask me for their favourite breakfast, to ask me if they can sit next to me at the table as it’s their turn to sit next to me…..No chasing around trying to find a mislaid tie or a beret or the other plimsoll……No practising spellings or times tables over the breakfast table, answering the hundredth “why” question or explaining why God doesn’t have a mummy, or trying to work out how far we are away from the Sun, or why some people are mean to each other……..or why mummy and daddy can barely talk to each other…….or why they can’t see me more often…..or why the CAFCASS think mummy can’t see them more often…..

Nobody.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Just an empty house. The television adverts show me all the family adverts: adverts for family cars, adverts for washing your children’s dirty clothes, family holidays, family home insurance, children’s medicines to stop them coughing at night, calpol to help your baby sleep………I have been deprived of my “Right to live a family life” which, by the way (or at least in my case its “by the way”) is one of the Rights set out in the Human Rights Act…..

No family for me anymore.

Just an empty house. And silence.

I can’t bear it – it hurts too much…….It really hurts….

 http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/Legal/Legal+briefing+The+Human+Rights+Act+1998.htm 

I am researching the rights of the child and have started to read about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The full English text of the Convention can be found here: http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf.

 It’s a lot to take in so, for the moment, I’m just posting the link. I’ll add to this post once I’ve had time to consider further what the Convention says and means…………..

Happy reading……..

I’m lying in bed surrounded by my children’s cuddly toys – it’s the nearest I can get to having my children with me. The teddies smell of my children – some even have slightly discoloured bits where one of the children has spilt something on their teddy as they’ve dragged it around with them. Last count, there are around 30 cuddly toys in my room – all belonging to them. They’re crazy about them. There are leopards, lions, sheep, rabbits, bears, glow bears, cats…….all sorts, shapes, sizes, colours. All of them much loved.

There here with me because the children want me to have something to cuddle when they’re away from me. Each time they come here to me, they bring different ones so that the teddys do a “rota” system: the teddies spend a few weeks here, then a few weeks at their dads…………

My son gave me his favourite rabbit to cuddle whilst he’s gone. When I objected, he said it was the only rabbit that had enough of his love in it to keep me going – he wanted his rabbit to love me whilst he’s gone. He took away another new one and said that I could have the new one once he’d loved it for a bit so that it was filled with his love and then I could cuddle up to the newly love-filled rabbit……Rather like the duracell bunny, I guess….

Only problem is, these teddies don’t cuddle back. They don’t bring tears of laughter to my eyes when we swap a silly joke or make up a story. They don’t have warm, loving hands that hold mine. They don’t tease and argue and fight and joke and laugh and cry  and sneeze and jump and muck about and giggle helplessly. They don’t look at me with love, kindness and care; I can’t even bear to look into their glassy, cold eyes and see………….nothing.

They’re empty in truth.

And that’s what I am without my children.

My children keep asking me this question: “Why won’t the court listen to what we want mummy? When will they have to listen to what we want? When can we decide who we want to live with?”

My son said: “I wish your psychiatrist hadn’t told the Court that you have Bipolar, mummy. Then we would still have you looking after us.”

They don’t understand why the Court has not listened to what they want or, in their eyes, even asked them what they want. They want to know why they can’t write to the Court or stand up in Court and be listened to. I have promised them that I will find out what their rights are………..

As I do my research, I will post up articles that seem to be helpful on various subjects. Here’s what the website “Compact law” says about the Children’s Voice:

The Children’s Voice

Sometimes a court may decide that the children should be represented themselves, the person who represents the children is the Childrens’ Guardian. This is a person selected from a special panel who will have experience of dealing with and advising children. They may have a social service background or be ex-probation officers. They may speak to the children and find out what the children want.

Your children are also allowed to have their own solicitor, the Children Act gives children a voice. A Children’s Guardian will usually appoint a solicitor to act for the children, but the children can also instruct their own solicitor.

It can be very hard for the judge to make a decision when he or she does not know you or your partner and has not met the children. The judge may appoint someone to be the courts eyes and ears, this person is called the “Court Welfare Officer”. They are usually members of the Probation Service and are attached to the Family Court Service.

They will often visit you and your partner and speak to the children and then write a report for the court, in which they can make suggestions.

The judge does not have to do what the Court Welfare Officer suggests in his or her report.

If you are not happy with the report and argue against it, the judge may accept what you say. You should co-operate with the Court Welfare Officer if you can, they are not there to take sides, but that does not mean that you have to agree with everything they say.

The judge can decide to speak to the children personally. However many judges do not like to do this as the children often get upset, because they do not want to be disloyal to one of their parents.

Also, part of the job of the Court Welfare Officer is to talk to the children to find out where they want to live and which parent they want to see.

The judge may feel it is better for the Court Welfare Officer to find out the children’s views.

If a child is thought to be old enough to understand the court proceedings their views will be taken into account. Children aged 12 or over are usually thought to be old enough to know what they want. The judge can decide to listen to the children or the judge can make the decision for the children.

The only principal the court has to consider is what would be in the best interests of the children.

http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free_legal_information/children/childf13.html

 All of the article is very interesting if that is what in fact happens. However, in my particular case, it didn’t happen like that. I was not informed by my lawyers or by CAFCASS that the children could have their own solicitor – in fact, I have only just found that out! Clearly, I will now start to investigate further how a child can appoint their own solicitor.

CAFCASS, for those of you who don’t know, is the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. They are the Court appointed Guardian for the children. In theory, they should be interviewing the children to find out what the children want and then prepare a report for the court to make recommendations as to what the children want. However, the judge doesn’t have to accept those recommendations, even though he/she hasn’t usually even met the children so can’t know what the children want unless he/she listens to the CAFCASS officer or interviews the children him/herself.

My judge thought the CAFCASS report was “appalling” as he hadn’t met with the children with each parent on our own thereby seeing the interaction. He only saw the children on one occasion and then misinterpreted what they said: I was there when my son said he “wanted to live with Daddy too” but the CAFCASS officer didn’t hear the “too” so reported my son’s statement as “he wanted to live with his father”. This is simply not the case at all; out of all the children he is the one who is expressing his unhappiness most about living away from me. A vital sentiment was misheard but was catastrophic in its consequences. Remarkably, none of these interviews are taped: if they were, then the judge could hear for themselves what the children said, in what tone of voice and with what body language. Given that 93% of our communication is non-verbal, you would think that it would be vital for the judge to hear/see for themselves the details of the interview with the children and not to rely on the CAFCASS officer’s perception of the interview.

In the meantime, here is an extract from a publication produced by CAFCASS advising children what to do when their parent’s go to court over residency:

 Your rights

CAFCASS respects your rights as a child. In particular, we support the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is an agreement made by many different countries about how children should be treated.

Here are some of your rights when there is a case about you at court:

• You have the right to see the Children’s Guardian who will listen to what you want to happen and tell the court about your wishes and feelings.

• You have the right to have your own Solicitor who will see you and listen to what you want. Your Solicitor will speak up for you in court.

• You have the right to ask to attend the court hearings, to see the court or to meet the Judge or Magistrate. Some children want to do this and some children don’t. Talk to the Children’s Guardian or your Solicitor about what you want.

• You have the right to be given written information about your case as long as the information is not damaging to you or to others.

Speak to the Children’s Guardian or your Solicitor about this.

• You have the right to be told what is happening with your case by both the Children’s Guardian and your Solicitor.

• Your have the right to know the decision made about you by the Judge or Magistrate. The Children’s Guardian must make sure you know what happened as soon as possible.

• You have the right to make a complaint if you are not happy about anything we have said or done. See further details on the back of this leaflet.

• If something does not happen that was decided by the court, you have a right to have this looked into by an Independent Reviewing Officer.

 Well, I have had to go on the website to find this: it certainly wasn’t given to my children. I’m off now to print it out and give it to the children next time I see them, together with a print out of the children-friendly version of the Human Rights Act 1998 giving them rights……..

 More on the Human Rights Act in another post……….

I will also do a post about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child………

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The Story:

This is a story of a Bipolar mother who has been in a custody battle over her three children due to her Bipolar. This is the result of my ex-husband’s application to the Court for an Sole Residency Order seeking an Order that he alone should look after the children with me only having supervised “contact” with them. The reason cited for his application is that I am “incapable” of looking after the children due to my Bipolar.His application asked for me to only have supervised contact with them.

A 17 month battle ensued resulting in a 10 day hearing in the High Court in the Royal Courts of Justice. Despite hearing evidence from 3 experts in psychiatry and psychology  all of whom gave evidence to the Judge that I am perfectly capable of looking after the children, the Judge decided that, because of my Bipolar, I should not be allowed to be the main carer of the children. She ordered that the children should be the subject of a Shared Residency Order ie that their care should be shared between me and their father with  them having homes with both of us. Legally, that puts us both on equal footing when it comes to our legal parenting rights. However, the Judge decided that their main carer should be their father on the basis that he doesn’t have the illness and can therefore provide greater stability than I can. He was not put through any psychological or psychiatric assessment to determine whether he was capable, despite the fact that he has been violent to both me and the children. The children’s nanny has had not psychiatric or psychological testing and yet has been allowed to take over their care in preference to me. Their main carer is therefore my husband’s nanny as, the reality is, that he is at work most of the time that he should be there looking after them. He heads up a City law firm litigation department (he’s an ex barrister) and is therefore rarely at home before their bed time.

I was thrown out of our marital home by my Husband who succesfully applied for an Occupation Order, claiming that my presence in the house was causing “significant harm” to the children. The Judge who heard this application was the same judge who heard the Children’s Act custody dispute. She came into court saying that she hadn’t had time to read the papers for the application but that she didn’t need to as it was obvious that my staying at the home would damage the children. She sought to evict me without consideration as to my financial means. I had no capital with which to buy or rent another home until the matrimonial home was sold. My husband was fighting my maintenance claim saying he couldn’t afford to pay me any maintenance out of his £450,000 earnings. My work was not producing enough income to fund a rented property. She gave no consideration for the effect that evicting me from my home was going to have on me and my mental health.

I was given 2 days to pack all my stuff and leave. I had nowhere to go other than to my brother’s house. I have been living there for 18 months in his spare bedroom where me and my three children have to share a bed when they come to stay with me. Yet the Shared Residency Order means that the children are to have HOMES with both me and my husband. I was specifically advised that, under the Matrimonial Homes Act, there would be no inequality between my financial situation for me and the kids when they are with me and those of my husband when the kids are with him.

The reality is stark. I am without my own home at all whilst my husband continues to live in our 7 bedroomed matrimonial home. He has been left with 80% of his salary whilst I have been awarded 20% of his salary as maintenance for me and the children. This maintenance will stop in 5 years time. I have incurred debts of £450,000 which has now bankrupted me given the fall in the housing market. I have no capital left with which to buy a home for the children.

The judge considers all this to be a fair outcome!

My children’s thoughts and feelings:

The children’s thoughts and feelings were simply not taken into account. They did not give direct evidence to the Judge either orally or verbally – a point I discuss further below. They are devastated by the decision and miss me terribly. They do not understand the Judge’s contention that I am not well enough to look after them nor do they agree – they all think that I am a good mother who is perfectly able to parent them and indeed they desperately want me to be parenting them far more regularly. My daughter wants to come and live with me and yet no-one is listening to her; she has resigned herself to the fact that, eventually, she will be able to “vote with her feet” and that eventually her view will count.

They cannot understand why they are not allowed to see their mummy very often and don’t understand why nobody has listened to what they want. They keep telling me that they want to live with me and that they are heartbroken without me. My youngest said “Mummy, there’s no love in my heart when you’re not here with me”. She is regularly having nightmares and is wetting and soiling herself regularly. She is convinced that I no longer love her despite all my assurances that I do. She’s clingy and demands my constant attention when I am with her. Relatives observing her say that she is clearly suffering. My son (8) tells me he is often crying himself to sleep and now talks to me and others through his favourite soft toy. He follows me everywhere, (even into the loo!), not letting me out of his sight. I have nicknamed him “my little shadow”. He cries on the car journey to drop him back to his father, pleading with me not to let him take him away from me. My eldest child, 10 , still asks to sleep in bed with me when she is with me and cuddles me for dear life. She keeps asking when the Court will listen to her views and when she is allowed to “vote with her feet”. She has asked me to get her her own solicitor so that she can be listened to.

They all need their mummy – that much is clear. They love me regardless of my condition and tell me that they don’t believe that I am doing anything wrong to them or harming them in any way. They simply cannot understand it all.

Me and my Bipolar:

I was the children’s main carer for the 9 years leading up to this Judgement, some of this time I was the sole carer at home, some of the time I had nanny help.

I suffer from Bipolar 2 and have therefore never experienced a manic episode. I do not suffer from delusions,nor have I ever been psychotic. I am told that I have the mildest form of Bipolar and it is on the borderline of a diagnosis which is why it went undiagnosed for 16 years!

I have only been in hospital twice, both of which were voluntary admissions – I have never been sectioned. The first admission was for depression, during which time I was diagnosed with depression only. The second time was because the psychiatrist changed his diagnosis to Bipolar and wanted me to be in hospital for the introduction of Lamotrigine and because he was concerned that I might be going hypomanic on the anti-depressants. I was not manic according to me and to the admission notes.

I have never abused the children. I have no substance abuse problems, nor have I ever had any substance abuse problems) and don’t even smoke. I have no criminal record. I have a full, clean driving licence and have never been convicted of any driving offences.

I am fully medication compliant and my condition is fully stable with no relapses since I started on medication 4 years ago. I have been through 2 years of intensive Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (the recommended treatment for Bipolar). During the 6 years leading up to my hospitalisation and diagnosis, I was the children’s main carer and was being their mum without being on any medication or treatment as I hadn’t yet been diagnosed. Yet, I was still managing to look after them. The children were thriving at school with good school reports and the schools reported them to be well-adjusted, highly intelligent, popular, lovely children.

I have experienced 4 depressive episodes (no manic ones) since I was 22 (I’m now in my 40s), each of which followed a major life trauma. I experienced the first during my degree – I still graduated with an honours degree, went through my military training at Sandhurst, became an Army officer and rowed for my university, winning the National Polytechnic rowing regatta, so the depression didn’t hamper my functioning. I experienced my second episode at Law school, but still graduated and became a lawyer. I experienced my 3rd after the birth of my second child, but still carried on parenting my two children (aged 2 and newborn) whilst managing my third pregnancy whilst my son was only 6 months old. During this time, I oversaw the building works in our house and worked part-time.

My fourth episode resulted in my (voluntary) admission to hospital. I had three children in three years, my two year old son developed diabetes, I was working and we had knocked down our house and I was overseeing the rebuilding works. My husband had become physically violent towards me and our marriage was crumbling and high in conflict with a husband who was rarely at home. When he was at home, he was emotionally and psychologically abusive for quite a lot of the time. He was highly critical of my parenting and of my abilities as a wife and housewife – I rarely got anything right in his eyes. I collapsed from the pressure of it all.

I tell you the following about myself only to give you an idea of what I have managed to achieve during my illness when I wasn’t even diagnosed and was on no medication. These achievements did not seem to carry much weight for the Judge and did not convince her that I was able to lead a full, productive life and be competent.

I am a qualified lawyer and still manage to work. I am a regular speaker at conferences, have been a speaker on the Radio, and have had many articles published in both the broadsheets and journals. I am an ex Territorial Army officer, having passed through Sandhurst military academy and was in the TA for over 9 years, both in command roles and in organisational roles. I am a qualified mountain expedition leader, have won sailing races with the Army, ski, run, cycle and have led an expedition team across the Yukon in Canada, leading them through 5 weeks of arduous terrain on a 250 mile trek. I gained my legal qualifications by doing a distance learning course of a law degree whilst working full time.

I have many long-standing friends, all of whom say that I have never exhibited any form of mania, nor any substantial depressive symptoms. None of them could believe that I have been given this diagnosis.

Discrimination, prejudice, ignorance and Human Rights and the Law

I will write separately in detail about the law on the Children’s Act,the Disability Discrimination Act, the Human Rights Act, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the other pieces of legislation. Being a lawyer I can strive to effect a change in the legislation. This will take a great deal of time and energy but I feel strongly that the law is not serving the interests of the children where a parent suffering from an illness is deemed incapable. The law I discuss here is my understanding and interpretation of it; I may be challenged on this but it is my view currently.

I believe that this whole situation and judgement is as a result of ignorance and a misunderstanding of the complexities of the condition; in particular the fact that there is an entire spectrum of manifestations of the condition from the extremely mild (as in my case) to the extremely severe. There is also an ignorance of the fact that there are two types of Bipolar: Bipolar 1 which is a mix of mania and mild depression compared to Bipolar 2 which is only hypomania but more severe depression. Clearly, the manifestations of these two types of the illness are very different and result in very different sets of behaviours of the individual sufferer and therefore the effect that this has on the family and especially the children.

Discrimination:

I also think that this case falls within the realm of mental health discrimination, prejudice and stigma by the Judge, my exhusband and his witnesses. There is still a high level of prejudice surrounding mental health conditions which is pervasive throughout our society and I aim, through this blog and my legal background and skills (I am a qualified lawyer), to fight it and challenge it through both the court system and the media.

I am fighting this issue as I now know that I am, unfortunately, one of many parents with this condition who is suffering from this kind of prejudice and losing custody of their children as a result. There are now many stories both on this blog and sent to me through my private email, which are heart-rending stories of parents having their children taken away from them as a result of their mental illness. Clearly, some parents are not well and struggle to find the right medication to stabilise their condition, some have substance abuse problems and some have such a severe form of the illness that they would find it very difficult to be a full time parent. However, there are many, many others who have managed to stabilise their condition such that it no longer impacts their day to day life in a debilitating way and these parents should not have their children taken away from them simply because they have a diagnosis of a condition which is not of their making, is not “their attitude, fault or fundamental flaw of personality” but is simply a disease which they are extremely unfortunate to have got.

There are parents with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, alzheimers, paralysis, Down’s syndrome, Autism or any other illness which can be debilitating either physically hampering the way that they can parent their children or emotionally/psychologically debilitating, yet do these parents have their children taken away from them because they are ill? There are parents who have alcohol and drug problems yet these parents don’t usually have their children taken away from them. Why should people with mental health problems be deemed to be automatically more incapable of parenting their children than these other sufferers?

My son has Type 1 diabetes (a form which is NOT the result of a poor diet), and I witness his extreme fluctuations in mood and functioning. When his blood sugar levels fluctuate, his mood fluctuates: he can become aggressive, irritable, bad-tempered, very fatigued, have headaches, feels nauseus, can’t concentrate, and at times can’t function at all. All this happens on a daily basis and yet how many diabetics have their children taken away from them on the basis that they are “incapable” of looking after their children?

They don’t, because every one would argue that that would be discriminatory and unnecessary. And yet it is allowed to happen to the mentally ill.

The United Nations Convention for the Rights of A Child.

This states clearly that all children have the right to be have their voice heard. Yet the Judge did not hear my children’s opinions at all. They did not give evidence either orally or in writing. They were deemed to be “too young” and yet there is no age stipulation in the legislation. It simply gives guidance that evidence of children will be taken into account if they are deemed to be sufficiently mature enough to understand the issues involved. What does that mean? Who makes that assessment? Who funds the children’s separate legal representation? A CAFCASS officer was the only person who heard what the children had to say.

CAFCASS: The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service

Apparently, the Court case was all about what was in the best interests of the children. Yet my children were interviewed by CAFCASS on only 1 occasion for approximately 50 minutes. They gave evidence to the CAFCASS officer that they want their mummy. My youngest daughter told CAFCASS that she wanted to live with me, my son said he wanted to live with both of us and my eldest daughter said she wanted to live with me but see a lot of her father. CAFCASS did not report this properly and there is no transcript taken of the interview so I cannot prove what I heard the children say when I was in the room with them when they said it. It is my word against the CAFCASS officer’s report.

The CAFCASS report was, in the judge’s own words “appalling” and highly deficient in its thoroughness and findings yet the proceedings continued, despite the fact that the Report was the only truly objective evidence on what the children wanted. The judge told the CAFCASS officer that it was the most depressing example of how badly a CAFCASS investigation could go, yet it was still admitted as evidence. He didn’t even interview the schools or my new partner or come to the home to see if the allegations of my disgusting housewifery were true.

The Judge, accountability and Appeals

Astonishingly, a Judge is exempt from the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act when acting in their judicial capacity! I simply do not understand why a Judge should be exempt from being held to be potentially discriminatory and held accountable for that bias. I am told also that I cannot appeal this decision as there are only 2 grounds for appeal:

1. That the Judge misapplied the law: well, she didn’t because the Children’s Act is entirely silent on the point of how a Judge should assess a parent’s capability or indeed a parent suffering with mental health issues.

2. That the Judge exercised her “judicial discretion” in such a way that no other judge would have exercised it in that way!. Clearly, an individual’s subjective discretion is such a nebulous concept that it is extremely difficult to criticise it. I was also advised that judges very rarely criticise another judge’s exercise of this judicial discretion. I find this an extraordinary protection to afford judges.

You also have to have leave to appeal and this leave has to be sought from the Judge herself. In other words, the judge who made the decision that you wish to appeal, has to agree that you can appeal it! She has reserved the case to herself too, which means that if I wish to bring a fresh application under the Children’s Act for the residency issue to be re-evaluated, I will get the same Judge!

I simply fail to see how this is justice or how it prevents miscarriages of justice from happening as there seems to be little room for challenging the decisions of the judges.

Human Rights

There are also Human Rights issues in all of this. There has, in my view, been a breach of various articles in the Human Rights Act including a breach of privacy, a breach of my right to a family life and a unfair trial.

Breach of privacy:

I was ordered to make a full disclosure of ALL my medical notes, both in patient and out patient and regardless of whether they pertained to my condition. They were also allowed to see ALL my psychology session notes. My computer was gone through by my husband as were all my mobile phone calls and texts and he was permitted to give evidence on the findings of his investigations. He had me followed by a private investigator.

Right to a fair trail

Whilst all of my medical history was obtained and given in evidence, none of his medical notes had to be disclosed, nor his notes from his psychology sessions that he had been having. No medical reports were conducted on him. This meant that the Judge heard all about my medical history and nothing about his.

I spent a week listening to my medical notes being taken to pieces by his barrister: excerpts from my psychology sessions, from my psychiatric assessments, from my previous medical history.I was absolutely destroyed as a person and as a mother by my husband, his witnesses and his barrister. I spent an entire week not being allowed to speak at all but having to  listen to my exhusband’s barrister ask his witnesses to explain certain behaviours and thoughts and emotions that I had as though I was completely invisible and as though they were able to understand what was going on in my head. It was deeply humiliating and degrading and very largely untrue and exaggerated. I then endured 3 days of cross-examination by a barrister who bullied and humiliated and taunted me in the most disgraceful manner about my illness, my behaviour and my emotional and psychological state. His entire aim was to make me seem like a complete danger to myself, to my children, to claim that I had a fundamental personality disorder despite having been told by the experts that I did not suffer from any personality disorder. My whole inside of my mind was taken to pieces by people who knew nothing about my illness and yet claimed that they “knew” me well enough to give evidence about my condition.

My husband’s legal team knew that the only way to ‘convince the Judge that I was the incapable, “mad” wife and mother that he said I was, was to try to focus on the period running up to and following on from my hospital admission and to assert that this was the norm. This he did with devastating success. He was able to focus the Judges attention away from all the years of my parenting prior to admission (ie 6 years) and only focus on the 4 months leading up to my admission and the 12 months following it.

I asked my legal team to include all his own bad behaviour but I was advised that we shouldn’t “sink to his level”.His violence towards me resulted in the police being called out to our home, yet no police records were brought into the trial. His drug taking in the past was not brought up, nor was his visits to places he shouldn’t have been visiting. None of this was considered important in terms of assessing his own personality and fitness to parent.

The witnesses were allowed to give evidence which was outside their realm of expertise ie they were not psychiatrists or psychologists and yet they were allowed to give evidence on my state of mind, on my personality and behaviour and were allowed to contend that I was mentally ill and that I had a personality disorder.

Law on expert evidence

The law on evidence is usually that no witness is allowed to give “expert evidence” ie evidence which should only be given by an expert in their field. So, for example, in a hearing on negligence of a construction of a building, a lay person cannot give evidence on whether or not the building had been constructed properly or not as they are not experts in construction. Yet, in a case involving Bipolar, the witnesses were allowed to give evidence on my state of mind, on my emotional background and on my thoughts. The Judge stated in her Judgement that the evidence of my neighbour was “particularly persuasive” yet my neighbour knows nothing about my condition.

This was therefore not a fair trial in my view. There was a huge disadvantage to me and none to him as he did not undergo any of the same scrutiny into his personality, his thoughts, behaviours etc yet mine were gone through in minute detail.

The Children’s Act – guidance on mentally ill parents

The Children’s Act is totally silent on the issue of parent’s with mental health conditions. It gives no guidance whatsoever to either the Judge or to CAFCASS on how to assess a parent’s capabilities when they are suffering from a mental health problem.

The Judge is given the sole responsibility for assessing any evidence. This is despite the fact that the Judge has no psychiatric or psychology training. They are given the jurisdiction to decide on issues which are beyond their training and experience.  Neither are they qualified in child psychology yet they are allowed to adjudicate on the effects of a particular parent’s illness on a child.

There is no panel of judges and experts; simply one judge.

How is this a “fair trial” and how is it justice?

“Personality v symptoms”

Because many of the symptoms of the illness can be mistaken for inherent personality traits, this is the main barrier to people being able to see the person for who they are rather than as a cluster of mistaken personality traits. The fatigue associated with depression is perceived as “laziness”, the lack of communication as “being anti-social”, the anxiety as being “over-sensitive” etc.

The mainstay of therapy for Bipolar consists of helping the sufferer develop “coping strategies” to stave off depression and minimise stress. Each sufferer has their own “triggers” ie stimuli, which will bring on either an episode of depression or an episode of mania/hypomania. During my therapy, I recognised that stress was a major trigger for me so I learnt to avoid taking on too much eg too much work, too much housework, too much organising social activities etc. I also learnt that a coping mechanism for stress was to go running, listen to music and do other pleasurable activities to bring balance back into my life.

During my recovery from my admission to hospital with depression, I was advised to “put my recovery first” for a while. This was interpretated by my husband and others as me being “selfish”, “self-absorbed” and not interested in being a wife and mother. I was “lazy”. On the one hand I was being advised by my medical team to put my recovery as the highest priority, on the other hand I was being criticised roundly by my husband and others for being “selfish” and “lazy”.  This contradiction was causing even further stress and was making my recovery harder. To have a husband who says, on the one hand that he understood and supported me and yet was highly critical when I implemented my coping strategies, was very difficult to cope with.

Noise is another trigger for me and London is extremely noisy and crowded. I therefore sought to regularly escape from the noise and crowds and travelled down to the seaside to get away. This was considered “unnecessary”, “self indulgent” “putting my own needs before my children’s”, “irresponsible”. The Judge decided that my reasons for doing this were “disingenous – as it was really for my socialising”. Yet this need to escape the noise and stress of my town was highlighted as a positive coping strategy by my psychologist.

All these symptoms and coping strategies were misinterpreted and I was condemned as a result.

My Bipolar Partner

My new partner has Bipolar 2 – a mild form like mine with no mania, delusions or psychosis but depressive episodes and anxiety. We met in hospital and formed a close bond as a result of our mutual understanding and empathy of our respective suffering and struggles to come to terms with our condition. He was diagnosed at the same time as me and he and I were the only people we each knew with the condition. We relied on each other during the first year of diagnosis to support, inform and listen to each other. He was discharged after the first week of my admission yet he came back to visit me, take me for walks and to the cinema, send me encouraging texts and so on. My husband visited me twice during my 5 weeks of hospitalisation, saying that he was “too busy” looking after the children and working to find the time to come and visit me. Not surprisingly, I came to rely increasingly on my new found fellow sufferer for support rather than my husband. After a year, I decided I wanted to leave my husband and be with someone who understood me and my condition and be fully accepting of the limitations it might impose on me.

My husband immediately issued proceedings against my new partner for a Prohibited Steps Order ie an application to the Court to prohibit my partner from seeing the children claiming that he was a danger to himself and a potential danger to the children. No supporting evidence was submitted with this application – it was based purely on my husband’s contention. This application was in place for 17 months before Judgement was handed down by the Judge.

My partner was prevented from seeing the children for this entire time simply based on  my exhusband’s  assertion that my partner had Bipolar and therefore shouldn’t be exposed to the children. He has no criminal record, no alcohol or drug abuse and has never hurt or threatened the children in any way. But he was still not allowed to see them until the Judge ruled that he could.  Unlike criminal law “innocent until proved guilty”, in these proceedings my partner was “ill and dangerous, until proved otherwise”.  This is despite the fact that the children adore him and kept asking why they couldn’t see him.

He went through hell in those 17 months; having been made a party to the proceedings he was required to be a witness and therefore be interviewed by my lawyer and prepare witness statements. He had to be examined by a psychiatrist to prepare an expert witness report, he was in the witness box for 2 days and his medical notes were trawled through in court. Unsurprisingly, he found this deeply humiliating, insulting and degrading. My husband’s barrister did everything he possibly could to depict him as unstable and incapable of being a parent.

When the Judge did hear the application, she threw it out on the basis that it was unfounded. Yet, during this 18 month period awaiting judgement, my partner was forbidden to see the children. This also meant that he was brought to trial where full disclosure of his own medical notes were ordered and he was cross examined for 2 days. He was again bullied and humiliated by the barrister cross examining him, and being told repeatedly that he was “unstable” and clearly not capable of parenting.

This was also used as a reason for my children not coming to live with me: the two of us together are clearly unable to care for children, according to the judge. But why?

• Neither of us has a criminal record.
• Neither of us has a drug or alcohol problem and never have had.
• Neither of us have abused the children in any way, nor threatened them.

Yet we are considered to not be capable of looking after the children, based on our mental health condition.

Kids need mums:

The vast majority of people believe that children need their mothers and not just on an ad hoc basis, but on a regular one with a great deal of love, nurturing and understanding of their needs on the mother’s part. The mother-child bond is fundamental, deep and irreplaceable. All the psychological studies into the importance of the role of the mother bears testament to my contentions. My children desperately want me; they are unutterably sad that I am forced to see them so rarely and are emotionally and psychologically suffering as a result.

This blog is my attempt to highlight that all parents, regardless of their illness, are needed by their children and that discrimination, ignorance, stigma and a lack of empathy is are all in the way of blocking those children from their parents.

Any comments, or offers of support would be greatly appreciated.

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