CA-2025-001272 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1048

The mother is entitled to criminal legal aid. She has had from time to time legal representation but has on each occasion parted company with them. The court assisted the mother in approaching Advocate in order to ensure that she was represented at this appeal. Although counsel agreed to act and drafted a skeleton argument on the mother’s behalf (a document which has not been read by the court, the mother having refused permission for it to do so), the mother has declined representation of counsel and represented herself with the assistance of an interpreter.

The mother filed statements on 16 June 2025 and on 28 July 2025. In her statement of 16 June 2025, she set out a chronology in respect of these proceedings and made allegations in relation to the father. She repeated in paragraph 2 of that document what she says is a clear way for the father to behave in order for her to change her position in relation to contact, a position repeated orally in her submissions to the court:

“My 11.2.2025 statement in committal proceedings para.84: All I am waiting for from him is to publicly, in court: Admit the harmful things he has done. Apologize for his wrongdoing and repeated lies. Provide evidence proving that the allegations I made were true. Demonstrate a genuine interest in providing care for my daughter through actions that have a cost, sustained over a significant period of time.”

The mother says, further into her statement, that she refuses to allow contact with someone who is willing to “destroy a child’s life for money” and who treats his own child as “just another victim in his life long criminal career”. “I also do not want” she said “my daughter to become comfortable with compulsive lying, destroying people’s lives and leading a criminal life”.

In her statement of 28 July 2025 the mother submitted that the judge had directed herself properly as to the law and that her decision that nothing would be served by imposing a sanction on the basis of her likely non-compliance, was a conclusion reasonably open to the judge. The judge had rightly taken into account the impact on A if her mother was sent to prison.