How a 4 year old is losing her dad for no good reason
My name is John. A year ago, after relationship problems, my wife left without warning, taking our four year old daughter Sarah with her. I was out getting the weekly shopping at the time, I had no idea where she’d gone and I was worried sick. A few days later, she told me she had left and said she would contact me shortly.
She never contacted me, never answered her phone and I didn’t see Sarah again for four months. Overnight, I had gone from being a full-time dad to not even knowing where my daughter lived, and having no idea when I would see her again.
I tried talking to our GP, social services, the Police, our health visitor; but no-one would help. They all said "It’s a civil matter. See a solicitor”.
After about a month of writing letters to my wife (at her parent’s address) asking her to try mediation, I finally gave up and went to see a solicitor. At the solicitor’s I found I had no right to see my daughter, even though I was her dad and she’d lived with me for years. My wife now said she was not going to let me see Sarah at all as she apparently thought ‘this was best’.
In order to see her again, I would have to go to court and apply for a ‘contact order’ – requiring my wife to let me see my daughter – even though I had done nothing wrong.
A few months later we had the first court hearing and I was granted one hour a week to see Sarah at a ‘supervised contact centre’. Contact centres are degrading and humiliating for the parent and child, they’re little better than a prison visit. I couldn’t take my daughter out of the room and I was watched like a criminal the whole time. Sarah hadn’t seen me at all for four months and was now only able to see me in this unnatural environment.
I could not understand how a mother could treat her daughter this way, but it appeared she wasn’t concerned about the damage and distress she was causing Sarah. It seems the end result of ending Sarah’s relationship with me was just so much more important to her.
Finally, eight months after Sarah had been taken, and after social services had investigated, the court made a contact order where I was granted unsupervised contact with Sarah all day every Sunday. This was meant to increase to two days a week after three months.
I started seeing Sarah on my own again and we began to rebuild our relationship. However, this lasted just three weeks. My wife then broke the court order, saying I couldn’t see Sarah again unless I agreed to go back to the contact centre. She gave no reason for this except she was ‘not happy’ with where I was taking Sarah – even though we were doing perfectly normal things like going to visit her grandparents and the park.
I went back to my solicitor but I was told that the court would not enforce the contact order they had made just weeks before!
It was up to me to apply to the court again to enforce the order and persuade the court yet again that I should be allowed to see my daughter! This would mean more delay, more expense (I had already spent over £5000 on legal bills) and still more distress to Sarah. I was beginning to realise, at last, what a farce the family courts really are.
So now I have no choice but to go back to court. I try to believe that the system will eventually protect my daughter’s right to have a dad, despite her mother’s wish to remove me from Sarah’s life. In the meantime, Sarah and me have to make do with one hour a week in a contact centre.
Sarah needs her dad back – not just someone she visits like a prisoner once a week.
