The media has
been dominated recently by stories highlighting how the social services are
frequently ripping families apart and also by publicity for Fathers4justice.
This website hopes to highlight the fact that it is not only fathers who get
treated harshly by the Social Services and the courts. The aim of this page
is to pool together mothers who have been wronged and to let them get their
stories heard. Stories like the one below:
For the last six months ‘X’ has been the victim of a witch hunt conducted by
her estranged husband, the Social Services and the courts. This has left her
three stones lighter, bereft, destitute, with a criminal record and totally
desperate for access to her three children.
It all began nine months ago after she filed for divorce from her husband,
‘Y’. She woke up one morning to a bin being thrown at her head by him and
then watched as he stood by the bed tearing up the divorce papers. Although
he was never been obviously physically violent, her husband subjected X to
verbal and mental abuse throughout their marriage and behaved towards her in
a very volatile and aggressive manner. X realised that if she went ahead
with the divorce her home life would be unbearable so decided, mostly for
the sake of her children, not to go ahead with it. This turned out to be the
biggest mistake she had ever made.
Unbeknown to her ‘Y’ began to put his own plan into action. He began
pestering X to sign a document to re-mortgage their house, something which
she was very reluctant to do as he didn’t really explain why he needed to do
this. He also suggested to her that they should get an Au Pair but when X
wouldn’t do this he threw a screwdriver at he car windscreen.
At this time the pain got too much for X and she admits to using alcohol on
a regular basis as an escape although this was only in the evenings after
she had put the children to bed.
One day there was a trivial row with one of the children before he went to
school about a pair of shoes X wanted him to wear which were easy to fasten
after PE because he had told her that he had had a bad day before because
his laces kept coming undone. All X wanted was for her children’s lives to
be as easy as possible unfortunately this often made her a little
over-protective of them. On this particular morning, however, her son
decided he didn’t like these shoes so took them outside and threw them up a
tree. This caused tempers to be frayed and led to an argument between X and
‘Y’.
Later that day ‘Y’ received a phone call from the headmistress informing him
that his son was upset about what happened before school. It transpired that
he had exaggerated what had occurred but ‘Y’ jumped at the opportunity to
blame everything on X’s “drink problem”. On hearing this, the Headmistress
rang the Child Protection Agency (CPA) and suddenly everything began to
escalate out of control and, before long, X’s life changed beyond all
recognition.
Her Son, ‘Z’, was interviewed at his school while the parents were being
interviewed at home. A ‘core group’ was quickly formed comprising of the
school nurse, social workers, teachers and a health visitor. When asked to
vote whether the children should be placed on the ‘at risk’ register, all of
those who actually know X voted against it but were overruled by one vote by
people who had never met her before and were only basing their decision on a
very one-sided account given by her husband.
The children
were subsequently put on the ‘at risk’ register for ‘possible emotional
harm’. Alongside this, X was told by the CPA that she could look after the
children in the daytime but she had to leave the family home every evening
and was thus forced to move in with her mother. X was absolutely devastated
by this, up till then she had never lest her youngest son, only two years
old, with anyone in case he cried for her.
A few days later, Z came back from a leisure outing with his father
announcing that the whole family were going back to Y’s country of birth and
that Mummy wasn’t going with them. Anxious to prevent this, X then got an
injunction against Y to stop him from taking the children out of the country
as it appeared that he was trying to extract all of the equity from the
house and probably didn’t intend to return to this country.
Whilst in her husband’s office, X found a list entitled “Ways to get rid of
X”. This included trying to get her sectioned, something that he had already
tried, and failed, to do. She was distraught to read this and decided, as
drink was the only real weapon he had against her, to book herself into a
rehab clinic. The evening before she went in, Y permitted her to stay in the
home to allow her to pack her clothes. Whilst there she was followed around
the house by Y’s mother who was moaning at her that it was wrong the Y
should have to give her money when they divorced.
That evening Y and X had yet another row in which Y rugby tackled X for no
apparent reason and called to his mother to phone the police, something
which she did without even asking why. Interestingly, another item on the
list I earlier referred to was “Get her arrested”. Y later claimed to the
police that X took a knife from a drawer and dropped it.
When X explained to her family that Y had phoned the police, she confided
that she didn’t have a clue why. The police rang back to check that
everything was ok and stated that they would come the next day.
The following morning X checked in at the clinic and was immediately
breathalysed. Upon seeing that the reading was zero the nurse commented on
how unusual this was as most patients have a drink before being admitted.
Throughout her stay there, she was often the butt of the other patients
jokes as they thought it was hilarious for someone to be in rehab because
they drink a few glasses of wine in the evening.
Upon being discharged, X received a call from Y saying “This has gone far
enough, meet me in town and we will go to my solicitor to sort this mess
out.” X waited at the time and place agreed and was shocked to be met by two
female police officers who promptly handcuffed her and placed her under
arrest. Y was pressing charges against her for a mysterious scratch on the
arm that he claimed to have received during the knife dropping incident. X
promptly appeared in court, pleaded not guilty and was placed on bail. This
enabled Y to obtain a non-molestation order against X.
The CPA said she could no longer have normal access to her children and
would instead have to have supervised contact with them. A social worker
would bring the children to her mother’s house for ninety minutes, two days
a week. X then moved into the annex of a friend’s house and the contact
continued there on the same basis.
It is impossible to understand the pain and devastation that X was going
through. She’d lost her home, her children and her life. She’d been accused
of being a violent alcoholic and had less access to her children than many
paedophiles get. You’d think it couldn’t get any worse but it did.
One evening X just couldn’t take any more and made a tearful phone call to
Y. The following morning she was woken up by her doorbell. When she answered
the door she was greeted by two female police officers who asked her what
she was doing there. “What do you mean? I live here” she replied. She was
then arrested on the dual charge of ringing Y and changing address,
something no-one had told her she was not allowed to do whilst on bail. How
would she have known this was not allowed? She has spent her life as a law
abiding citizen.
At the police station she was told by a policeman that they would have to
keep her in a cell overnight but at court the next day they would probably
give her a slap on the wrists and send her home. Unfortunately she seemed to
catch the judge on a bad day as he was sending everyone to prison, including
her. Her family were given no information as to where she had been taken and
spent hours on the telephone being passed from one prison to another. They
discovered the next day that she had been taken to a prison 30 miles away
from home and were allowed to arrange to go to see her the day after. When
they arrived and were taken to see her in the visiting room they saw her sat
alone at a table. As soon as they reached her she broke down in tears and
continued sobbing for 10 minutes. An official commented to her that he
couldn’t believe what they are sending women to prison for these days and
that she shouldn’t be there. She was eventually released on appeal after 5
days in prison.
The supervised visits continued. On one of these visits X told Z that she
was going to court to try to see him and his brothers more. She was told by
the social worker that this was inappropriate behaviour and the venue of the
visits was changed to the social services offices as punishment.
X was arrested for the third time when she saw Y and the children in church
and spoke to them because the two year old was calling out “Mummy, Mummy!”
What mother wouldn’t do exactly what she did, to walk away would be totally
against all motherly instinct.
Despite the vicar asking Y not to phone the police, he did exactly that. For
once X had a judge that could see how desperate she was and, rather than
punish her, he ordered that she could see her children more often. X could
now see them for ninety minutes twice a week plus four hours on a Saturday.
She could now see the two year old for four hours a day but was still
supervised, sometimes by social workers and sometimes by her landlady. Z
wrote in his school diary that he was so happy to be seeing his mother three
times a week. He also wrote to Childline about how unhappy he was at home
with his father and the nanny he had hired to look after the children. Z
also told X that he would kill himself if she didn’t win custody.
By now there had been another CPA meeting and the children had been removed
from the ‘at risk’ register and the case had been transferred to local
social workers. Initially all concerned thought this was an improvement but
they were soon proved wrong. Although most of the new social workers were
friendly and supportive, especially one who told X that she had been doing
the job for 24 years and was embarrassed to be supervising her, the person
in charge started criticising X by saying that she was too lenient with the
children and that she gave them too many sweets.
She also
accused X of undermining Y to the kids and said she was acting irrationally,
not with the children but with the people who were causing her downfall.
(Personally, I think that most mothers would act at least a little
irrationally if they were suddenly only allowed to see their kids a few
hours a week!) This was said after X was unable to keep her cool during a
meeting with the social worker and Y. X went with her mother to the Z’s
school and the teacher showed him his work where he had written how unhappy
he was and how he had no reason to live. X wanted a photocopy of this to
give to her solicitor but the headmistress insisted that everything at Z’s
home is fine.
This is the
same woman who called the CPA in the first place because he was a little
upset and now he is suicidal. X also put the phone down on the social worker
when she rang to inform that, “although you are a good mother, I will be
recommending that Y has full custody of the children”. After Y did get full
custody of the children, The social worker incredibly then recommended that
X should have even less contact with the children as she claimed it was
disruptive and they are better off with one parent. Right from the
beginning, although social workers are supposed to be neutral, it has always
appeared as if they have been working for Y. It should be added that Y is a
financially motivated businessman who has treated the whole debacle as
though this is just another business deal he has to win because if X got the
children he would have to give her money. Y has even ripped off his own
extended family, he refused to pay some accountants in the family warning
them that if they pressed charges it would cause a family rift.
X was now allowed to see the children for six hours on Saturdays and for
ninety minutes on Wednesday but his did not last long. Z told X, in the
presence of a family support worker that Y wasn’t feeding them properly and
was hitting them. The social worker went to investigate the claims then said
they weren’t substantiated. To make matters worse, Y accused X of
encouraging Z to make these claims and the social services believed him and
cut contact to just two hours a week in the social services offices. The
crazy thing about this is that all of X’s contact has been supervised, how
on earth could she have encouraged Z to make these claims without being
heard by a social worker.
I realise Y is probably being encouraged by his solicitors to eliminate X in
order to keep all of his assets but its all at the expense of the children’s
happiness. As well as effectively losing a mother they are unable to see the
rest of the family. Z gave a note to his grandmother saying “I miss you so
much, I always sleep with the teddy bear you made for me”. Before this
happened she saw him almost everyday.
As well as not being able to see the two year old on
his second or third birthday she was also unable to see the kids at all over
Christmas and has been denied any extra access on any of their birthdays.
She feels she cannot win because the goalposts keeping getting moved. The
visits originally began because of Y’s claims about her alcohol abuse.
Despite these claims being unsubstantiated, the social services have still
not withdrawn but, instead, keep finding more reasons to stay involved.
X went back to court to gain more access to her
children. Guess what, On the social workers recommendation , access was cut
to just one hour a week with an extra thirty minutes for the two year old.
The reasoning behind this is that, when they see her, the two older children
always say how unhappy they are at home and ask when they can live with her
saying “why don’t you do more” and “why don’t you start a petition?” Because
X tells them she is trying to get custody of them and doesn’t tell the
children off for saying they are unhappy, it is considered to be disruptive.
Another of the children’s complaints is that “no one listens to us about
what we want”.
They obviously feel that their mother is the only one
who will but because of this they are punished with even less time with
their mother and the social services have said that if it continues they
will stop access altogether. Since this webpage was originally written X has
been back to court several times and has still got no further. As predicted
she came out of the divorce virtually empty handed but was not worried by
this as she believed her ex-husband would stop the abuse. She still only
gets one hour a week contact with the children.
