CCChat-Magazine_Issue-25-The-Further-Learning-Issue

She had to see a child psychologist for
a long while and whilst his contact was
then stopped, he had letterbox contact
– so he could send cards at birthdays
and Christmas. I haven’t had contact
for quite a few years now but she is an
adult and can make her own decisions.
Her decision is still to not have contact
with him. It was a very difficult time
and it went on much longer and much
further after I left him.
M: It’s not what should be happening.
How did it make you feel having to go
through that?
one day and she had written, on a
whiteboard “ I want to die.” that I
realised. Obviously I was very worried
and took her to the doctor. She told the
doctor what was happening on contact
visits. It was a very difficult time and I
have always felt very let down by the
family courts in that respect. Things
have changed but in some ways things
haven’t moved on at all. I hear from
women whose ex partners have been
more abusive than my ex-husband and
they get a lesser sentence, so, in some
respects, I was very lucky and certainly
the police assigned to me really wanted
him to be convicted and given a prison
sentence, and I was lucky that I had
them.
“He was hiding in the wardrobe in the bedroom and when I came
back, he jumped out. He had a knife and stabbed me."
S: I think with my daughter there was
a lot of guilt on my part because I felt I
should have been able to protect her
and that had been taken away from me
by the family court and the belief, at
that time, and still to a certain extent
at this time, that a child needs two
parents and has the right to know the
father and clearly, in my case and a lot
of cases I have worked with, it was and
still is the wrong thing to do.
It was a mistake to give him contact
because it has caused a lifetime of
damage to my daughter who has found
it very difficult to trust men. There’s a
lot of guilt because I felt I should have
seen the signs when she was coming
back from contact. I thought she was
being difficult, she never said anything
and it was only when she got to 11
years old and I went into her bedroom
M: I actually hear that a lot, where the
police really want a conviction for a
perpetrator and then it all goes pear
shaped in the courts so there is
something happening at the judicial or
magisterial level where harm isn’t
being recognised. Hopefully the
recommendations in the Harms report
and the appeal process of the 3
conjoined appeals will go some way
towards effecting some meaningful
progress for victims, as it’s long
overdue. Thank you so much for telling
me about your own lived experience,
I’m a bit lost for words actually and
can’t imagine what you and your
daughter had to go through and the
worry it must have caused. Now that
you’re at NCDV what are you hoping to
do both within NCDV but also out of it,
what’s the plan from hereon?
Making The Invisible Visible