A mum is having to fight to overturn a judge’s decision to allow her child to stay overnight with her father – despite findings that he raped and abused her.
The allegations against the father, a serving member of the armed forces, were found proven following a fact-finding exercise as part of family court proceedings.
But Charlotte Proudman, representing the mother, told a High Court hearing on Wednesday that those findings ‘have been put to one side’, with the focus instead placed on a ‘pro-contact approach’.
She said the woman is a ‘rape victim ordered to promote contact with her rapist’.
Dr Proudman said a judge concluded after a fact-finding hearing in 2021 that the father, who is a serving member of the armed forces, had begun a sexual relationship with the mother while she was 15 years old, and he was 24.
He subsequently raped, abused and sexually assaulted her, the judge also found.
Dr Proudman alleged the father has continued to be coercive and controlling after the 2021 findings.
In March, Judge Christopher Sharp KC ordered a further fact-finding hearing to take place later this year, to examine the father’s alleged continued abuse.
He also allowed for the child to stay with her father for two nights every other week.
The mother is appealing against this decision and wants to remove overnight contact, restricting it to every other Saturday and Tuesday evening.
Carl Geary, representing the father, said the mother had agreed to the overnight contact at a previous hearing and therefore the decision should stand.
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Dr Proudman said her client was vulnerable and without legal support at the time and described her as a ‘rape victim ordered to promote contact with her rapist’.
She said in written submissions: ‘The case is riddled with failures. Instead, the findings have been entirely ignored by the court and professionals.
‘The findings have been put to one side and the focus has been on a “pro-contact approach”.’
She told the court that the mother has been subject to ‘denigration’ and ‘psychological abuse’, describing the father as ‘being a person plainly on a short fuse’.
‘The reality is that this father is unsafe to have contact with the child,’ she told the court.
Dr Proudman added: ‘The court has sanctioned regular contact with the father who raped the mother. That is inevitably going to be harmful and potentially put the child at physical risk.’
Mr Geary asked the court to leave the current contact rules in place that would allow the father to see his child overnight.
He said Judge Sharp had ‘extensive knowledge of the factual matrix’ surrounding the case, adding: ‘This is a case where an experienced recorder has expressed his professional opinion.’
Not all of the mother’s allegations were proven while some were proven ‘to a far lesser extent than suggested’, he noted in written submissions.
The barrister said: ‘We say that the decision he reached was fully within the ambit of decisions that he could reach and for that reason, it would be wrong to interfere with that and for this court to implant its own view.’
He also said the fact-finding hearing later this year will deal with allegations made since the 2021 findings.
In written submissions, he said: ‘None of the remaining allegations to be heard at a fact-finding hearing pertain to any form of physical violence against the mother or the child and do not necessarily in and of themselves demonstrate an escalation in the father’s behaviour or increased risk of harm to the child.’
He also said it was ‘inconceivable’ that the mother could consider overnight contact safe at a hearing in September but not in March.
‘The mother now seeks to depart from a position she previously agreed to, without identifying any material change in circumstances or new evidence of risk as between the time of her agreement and the imposition of the carried contact arrangements,’ he noted.
A written judgment from Mr Justice Peel is expected to be given later this week.
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