We believe all allegations of domestic violence or child abuse made by one party against the other during a child contact case, must be made under oath, and dealt with quickly by a criminal court capable of delivering a clear verdict. This is in order to prevent such allegations being made maliciously; and to ensure the safety of the alleged victim and any other children the alleged perpetrator is in contact with.

When I applied for contact with my daughter, her mother accused me of sexually abusing my daughter and so was prevented from seeing her. Although these allegations were false and malicious, I could accept that the court could not allow contact during this time because the consequences to my daughter would have been so severe had they been true. However, when the allegations were later shown to be entirely false 18 months later (and clearly based on lies) the court did nothing and there was no come-back on the mother at all.

It was immediately clear what an effective weapon false allegations of abuse were. Of course, it was simply the court’s approach to them that makes them such an effective weapon. In fact, anyone who wanted to stop a father seeing the child may as well make false allegations against him – they’d almost be stupid not too!

We believe anyone making maliciously false allegations should face the charge of perjury in a criminal court. If there were consequences to making false and malicious allegations. this would go a long way to addressing this problem which not only harms the children and the accused, but also wastes an enormous amount of court and other services time.