Case No. EWFC-171

45In addition to their statements, the parents have provided copies of messages between them, mostly on WhatsApp. In June 2019, and this is from the messages father provided to the court to support his case, he was being demanding about the weekends he wanted to have the children and he would not listen to the mother’s reasonable explanations that she already had work and social events planned. Had he been patient, it could have all been sorted out. For more than two years, staying contact had taken place. It was usually on father’s terms. In February 2019, mother had suggested they stay in Cambridge because of the weather. Father refused. The father suggests he could not keep the children entertained for a day in Cambridge, but he sometimes returned them even after just a few hours. Grandfather had offered his flat for father to stay in with the children and he refused. On more than one occasion, father decided to return the children home early and expected mother to leave work and be there. He did that even from Portsmouth; that is evidenced in the messages. It was his choice to cut down the time the children spent with him. Mother is right that the father was controlling and dictated when he would see the children. 46I move on to the oral evidence. In her oral evidence, I put father’s questions to mother. She said that she did not make a threat that he would never see the children if he did not do what she demanded financially. In fact, I know from their evidence that there was an order for maintenance pending suit of about £3,800 a month. Father only paid £680 and mother did not stop the contact. She was asked about the time just after the parents separated. She said she had asked father not to see the children until they had worked out what they were going to say. She suggested counselling. He started seeing them three weeks or so after he left and she did not think it was as long as a month. 47She said it was a very difficult time. She did not know why he had left. She did not know he was having an affair and she did not know what was going to happen. She did not know where he was. She thought it was unfair on the children to be put in the middle of that. She wanted them to work out what they were going to say to the children. She asked father to sit down with her or go to counselling. She tried to give the children as easy a time as possible. They were due to start school. It was plainly very bad timing.48She agrees that she said contact had to be under the supervision of grandfather at first. The father saw the children every Saturday. Then he did not want his dad there so he took them without grandfather. It went to overnight and then every weekend when he was living locally in Cambourne. He had a large house with his new partner and her children. Mother told me that the children liked seeing their dad and they enjoyed the day visits. I have no evidence that she spent those first few weeks putting the children off seeing their father.49It became a problem when it was going to the new house. A went out with her dad for the day. She did not want to go to his house. Mother asked him not to introduce the children to his new partner, it had only been a matter of weeks, and, indeed, we now know that the relationship did not last. He told A she had to go to his house. He introduced her to his new partner and sent her off to play with the children. A found it difficult to accept that he had a new partner and family and she did not want to go there. She did continue though for some periods of time. She wanted grandfather there but father said absolutely not. Then when the twins started staying the night, A absolutely refused to go.50Moving on to the handovers at car boot sales, she said the children wanted their grandfather there. So she suggested that as a meeting place because grandfather would be there and it could be relaxed. She was quite measured in not blaming father for making things difficult but A wanted a third-party present and father said no. A, not surprisingly, felt he did not listen to her. In 2019, she said the children stayed for nine days with their dad in Portsmouth and they found it difficult. She referred to the handovers when she was almost having to manhandle the children to the gate and father would grab them and put them in the car. It was around that time that she said they had to step back and take the process slowly. She thought if they went for the day and had a fantastic time, they could build it up again. She did not stop contact. I put to her father’s position that she was dictating all of the arrangements. She said she did not feel like that.51Of the day visits in Cambridge where father returned the children early, there were four or five of them. The majority of time she was at home and so she did not say no. There were two occasions though when she was working and she could not just walk out of work and she was not in a position to turn down work. He refused to keep them and, in the end, she had to cancel work and come home. I have seen the messages. Instead of having a good time with the children, father was bringing them back early to inconvenience the mother. One time, the children were upset and worried because they had got back before her and they said daddy had said she could not be bothered and would not be there.52She agrees that A last saw her father to spend time with him on her birthday in 2018 but she has seen him at handovers. Father made a threat to call the police and A was upset and scared. His position is that his threat to call the police was justified. I disagree. Mother said he should not have involved A and I agree. She was asked about the fact that some of these issues had not been raised before and she said she had looked back and seen patterns of behaviour. She had not made up the incident about A getting a glass of water. She accepts that she did not mention the manhandling on the C1A. Looking back though, he did manhandle the children. It is her perspective that has changed. She is more able to see what was right and to say what is okay and what is not. That the children said it independently about their father has made her stronger. 53When the manhandling of the children into the car was put to father, he referred to them squirming or wriggling and there were a couple of times when they did not want to go. So he carefully put them into a car. I do not think he would have done it carefully. I have seen his reaction when he does not like things. He said it was rubbish that there was an occasion at the car boot sale when the children did not want to go but he then accepted that there were occasions when one of the twins did not want to go.54Mother fully accepted that there was one conversation with her mother that A overheard about how she was going to cope. She said it was not bad mouthing her father and she knows it is damaging for children to hear conversations. A told her father what she overheard, A became upset because her dad went on and on about it. A was scared that he had made her say things. She said something about the cost of things. She said she had heard overheard her mum’s remark about how they would manage and then he questioned her over and over again. She does not agree with his point that it is normal to find out as much as you can and nor do I. As she said:“Hounding a child until they are hysterically crying is wrong and then he repeated it to her siblings. So he made it ten times worse.”55Mother said she tried very hard not to show fear in front of father and she does not think that her feelings are why A did not want to see him. A has seen as she gets older things that are scary and she remembers how she is treated. In relation to the twins, she said he would often grab them and manhandle them into the car. She thinks the children did enjoy the contact some of the time and found it fun. She accepts they had enjoyable times in Portsmouth but the journey was affecting them. She said she does not think the children heard the time that she asked him to leave or she would call the police. They had gone into the house. Of course, he should not have been inside the gate in any event.56Father says that the children looked forward to going back to his house because they got presents. Both parents, it seemed to me, tried to encourage the children with gifts to go to contact but for father it seems to have backfired on him. He thinks that A was getting quality time with her mother when the twins were with him and that seems to be a criticism. I do not know why. He should have been spending quality time with the twins.57The twins wanted grandfather present. Father kept saying he could not be and that angered him. I really cannot see why he should get angry. There was absolutely no need. It was put to her that she told the children about their father not paying enough. She said not. The children noticed that they did not have things that the father did and they asked about them. She said, the children had gone from being very privileged to not even having a television. Children are not silly. They can see a difference in people’s households. 58Mother was asked why she does not think father can meet the children’s needs outside of a supervised setting and she says it is because that they do not know when he is going to get angry or say that they have done something wrong. She thinks they have come to harm in his care and they have talked about incidents more than a year later when it still affects them. There was an occasion when contact came to an end at the contact centre. She criticised father and the contact centre because B had a broken arm and she should not have been out playing. I think she rather overreacted. B did not come to any harm on that occasion. She also lost faith in the contact centre because of a time that father had come out to talk to her and she was concerned that they were not acting on the safeguarding. 59The parental alienation allegations were put to her and she said that she and father had different opinions of what is acceptable behaviour and that is the sticking point. She does not thing A’s hostility comes from her. It comes from A’s own views and she said this is not just about two incidents. It is about how he views parenting and that things have to be his way, and for B these are not minor incidents. She thinks the children in unsupervised contact were frightened of his anger.60When she was cross-examined on behalf of the guardian, mother said that if somebody around B is angry, he will flinch even now and she has to reassure him. There was an occasion when father came out to talk to her but she felt that the contact centre were dismissive of her concerns. Although I think she slightly overreacted, one has to bear in mind the history. She said that she put forward other people who were happy to supervise contact and she had looked at another contact centre as well. It seems to me that she was not trying to stop contact. Towards the end of her evidence, she said that her concern is that the bad outweighs the good to such an extent that she thinks the children should not even see father in a contact centre. I am not sure that she is right about that but I can understand why she might think it. 61When father gave evidence, as he represents himself I gave him some latitude to deal with matters since he made his statement and to respond to the evidence. He was clear that he refuted maternal grandmother’s evidence and he did not accept the evidence of his father either. He said that all he wanted to do was see his children. He did not want to enter into a mudslinging match and now he thinks that the break up could have been handled better by both of them but he blamed mother for it being more acrimonious. I did not find her acrimonious and I am not sure what else she could have done to make it painless for the children. He embarked on the mudslinging match.62He does not see that his decision to separate was badly handled by him. He left on 19 August to stay with a friend in Portsmouth. Then he met his new partner at an unofficial school reunion. It snowballed, he said. He did not want to say when they started living together but, eventually, we narrowed it down to late August/early September, i.e. very quickly. They then rented a house together in this area in Cambourne at the end of September. They separated in March or April and she moved back to Portsmouth.63Father said that he then moved to Portsmouth in the May partly to see if he could repair that relationship and partly because he never really liked Cambridge anyway. He enjoyed being in Portsmouth. He did not want to live in Cambridge. He said he was totally single so he could go anywhere, yet he chose to move a long way from his children. He said he was willing to travel to see the children. That is not strictly accurate. He was willing to travel to collect the children but he was insistent that they would then make the two and a half hours or so journey on a Friday evening to go and stay there. He moved in with his current partner in February 2020.64He criticises mother for going to court over the finances yet on his own evidence, he was only going to pay the bills until the end of 2017 and he thought that was generous. She went to court. A maintenance pending suit was ordered for almost £4,000 and he continued to pay £680 per month. He then wanted to take away the car which she used. He claimed that it needed repairs but he was using it. She had to go to court to get an order for him to return the car for her use. Despite all of that, she never stopped contact.65In 2019, he says he was borrowing his then partner’s car at alternate weekends. He blames the mother for things having gone horribly, in his words. He wanted to go to court just to formalise the contact, yet he put all the allegations in his application form and he said in retrospect that maybe he should have metered down what he put on the form. He kept saying that he was being stopped from seeing the children. The reality is that he was not. Bringing matters up-to-date, the father said that even now, mother cannot accept that he can look after the children and she is so entrenched. Pots and kettles spring to mind. 66Of his own father, father said that they always had a good relationship and he does not know what changed but the relationship deteriorated. Father could not see that from the children’s point of view, his father was a suitable person to come to contact; his new partner was not. 67He was asked about the time when he went into the gate at the property and he said at one time, he had been waiting for about fifteen minutes. Then he said that he had just parked up and gone through the gate. Those cannot both be accurate. Someone else went in and he went in too and my view is that he seized that opportunity knowing he was not meant to go in. He then blames mother for getting cross with him for doing something he knew he was not meant to be doing. He created the situation, he upset the children. He presented a picture of jolly journeys to and from Portsmouth and then he said that he had had to go in because the children were cold and bored having been in the car for two and a half hours.68There was an occasion when he had called up the mother to deal with the children because they were being unruly and she told him to deal with it as the children were in his care. He thinks that she was wrong. I do not agree. The children were in his care. He could not cope with them and he wanted to pass on to her the responsibility for disciplining when he could not manage the children. 69In relation to the Hampshire Children’s Services report, he said that the arguments with him and his partner were because of these proceedings. He did accept, when pressed, that that was not an excuse. 70He was asked in cross-examination about A and her mother having to shut themselves in the bathroom and he says that is not true. The words that A had said to the Cafcass officer were put to him and he simply said that he and mother did not argue. I cannot accept that. A recalls him shouting and her mum crying. He said that A never had to console her mother. That is not how A remembered it.71He did accept there was an incident in the car. A remembers him shouting at her. He said he did not shout. He said he was insistent that she told him what she had overheard. He accepts that he asked her several times, he said, in a stern manner. There is not much between him and A. He accepted eventually it would have been upsetting for A. She said something, he would not let it go. A is right, he kept shouting at her. Once he gets started, he does not stop and the times where mother and A went into the bathroom was because that was her escape.72He agreed that when they separated, it was not discussed with the children. He said he did not want to leave with the children there and so he left when they were out so mother had to pick up the pieces. He said it was about three to four weeks later that he saw the children. He said it was a difficult time but the children came bounding in and were pleased to see him. That suggests that mother had not spent those three weeks putting the children off him.73He said he did not insist A meet his new family straight away. It certainly was not very long afterwards. He took the children to the home that he was sharing and then he sent A up to play with the children even though that was not what A wanted. He said he felt it was time to introduce her. The children were upset and he was putting pressure on A. This is nothing to do with mother. It was to do with what he wanted. With 2020 hindsight, he accepted he could have done it a better way. He said it is irrelevant now but it is not irrelevant for A. He still maintains that mother is alienating the children from him and yet the rift with A was solely caused by his actions. The children were pleased to see him when they first saw him. They did not see anything wrong with their paternal grandfather being present. They did not have a sense of fear but he created it. None of that was down to their mother. He forgets that A was an 8-year-old child and he thought her views should be disregarded. He has spent years wrongly blaming mother. He showed limited insight when he gave his evidence about how things could have been handled better but that insight did not last.74Asked about some of the chronology, father said the children spent Christmas 2017 with him and they had a good time. So that is not the mother preventing contact. He accepted that A started to pull away from him after the incident in the car in February 2018. He accepts she was upset but he thinks his actions were justified. He denies telling her that he would call the police but he said that he told mother that if he got a court order and she did not comply, the police would enforce it. I think he made that plain to A as well.75Moving on in time, in May 2018 he got a flat and moved to Portsmouth, that was what he wanted. It meant the children had a long journey. He says that the twins did not mind the journey but from what they have said, that is not right. He was seeing the children every other weekend and for parts of the holidays. There is no alienation there by their mother. There were obviously incidents in the car. A had told the Cafcass officer and the other children have also spoken about it.76He was asked about the occasions when he returned the children early and I have seen the messages about that. One of these, August 2019, was a weekend staying contact. On the Saturday, he said the children would be back early on the Sunday, about one-ish. Mother said she could not be home until five. He claimed he had to return the car he was borrowing. He repeated the same message a couple of hours later and then on the Sunday morning, he sent her a message to say that he would be returning the children even earlier. For someone who wanted to spend as much time with the children as possible, he was very keen to return them early, particularly, it seems to me, on occasions when the knew there would be a difficulty for their mother. On one occasion, the children had only been with him for two hours when he wanted to return them early and I cannot see any reason for that other than to disrupt mother.77I had a message at C77 in the bundle where father was sending mother messages saying “YOU are stopping me from seeing our children.” He accused her of ruining the children and stealing a parent away from them. It was not true but he was extremely unpleasant in these messages.78In February 2019, mother said the children would prefer to spend time with him in Cambridge. He just said “no,” but he accepted there were times when the children were reluctant to go to Portsmouth. He claimed mother was dictating the contact arrangements. She was not. She was making a suggestion to try and make it work.79Asked about the WhatsApp exchange in June 2019, he said that he wanted to swap the alternate weekends. Mother reminded him of the agreement they had made and that she had kept the weekends free. He said, “You are being unnecessarily cruel and inflexible.” He said he would go to court and said:“I will happily tell the children that I cannot see them as their mother will not let me when I have access to a car.”He wanted to involve the children in his views having criticised her for once having a conversation that A overheard. He tried to bully her into agreeing or he would tell the children and, in the end, she backed down and said she would try to change her work arrangements by the end of the year. It then emerged that grandfather had offered to lend him a car and so there was no need for any of this in any event. She gave in and, even then, he was not happy and he wanted things done his way. That is how mother and the children have experienced his behaviour.80Father was asked why he made the drug allegations in his application on the C100 and he said that was because mother was acting in a way he did not expect. I think what he did not expect was that she might stick up for herself. Father eventually did accept that the incident in the car had had a profound effect on B but then he thought B should have moved on. He was referred to the extracts I have read from the Cafcass report and he just thinks that the children are reflecting their mother’s views. I think their mother is reflecting the way the children feel and she was finally brave enough to say it. The children have all independently reported their views about father and not giving them their presents. In his evidence, he said he wanted to give them the presents personally.81Father accepted in cross-examination that the only time mother actually cancelled contact was 14 February at the contact centre last year when A was ill. He said that this year, he has asked the children for a Christmas list. A sent a list. B has not. C put one thing in there but he wants a complete list of everything she wants. C apparently wants a knitting machine. That seemed to be quite modest. I do not know why he cannot just give her the present she would like. If B has not given him a list, why not just give him some money and say, “Buy something nice” but he will only do things on his terms. There was some cross-examination about things he says mother has said about money but I reject that. 82I was concerned by his attitude to the Hampshire Children’s Services’ reports because he gave excuses for the arguments and minimised the incidents. He suggested that it was the fault of either the mother of those children or the mother in this case and he took no responsibility for his own actions. Just as in these proceedings, the mother in those proceedings gets the blame for his anger.83When he was cross-examined for the guardian about his allegations of alienation, he said it was the stopping the contact in the first few weeks, saying it had to be supervised by the paternal grandfather but then he accepted that it was what A requested. He thought it was inexplicable that A did not want to stay overnight but it is very clear why she did not want to stay overnight. He agreed in retrospect that it was a sudden separation and it might have been a good idea to have an agreed narrative but he wanted to talk to them and see them. It was all about what he wanted. He was asked again about the WhatsApp exchange. He went on at mother for three hours about what he wanted. It was not about seeing the children on a regular basis, he wanted to change the arrangements they had made.84He was asked again about A not wanting to go to his home and finally accepted that, in retrospect, he could have handled it better and he now accepts that A found it difficult. During cross-examination, he referred to having extra contact in March 2019 and the point not surprisingly put by counsel was that if mother was arranging extra contact, that did not look like alienation. It was put to father that he could have stayed in Cambridge and done activities. His reply is Portsmouth is where he lives and he was not going to be dictated to by mother. She was not dictating. She was trying to make contact work.85Towards the end of his evidence about C and B, father accepted that the separation and what happened may have affected them but he could not see that moving so far away made contact difficult and less enjoyable for the children. He could not see that the effects of his behaviour were cumulative. There are occasional moments where there seemed to be some insight and self-reflection in his evidence but by the time it came to submissions, those had gone. I have set out the parents’ evidence in detail, especially father’s. It shows how wrong he is in his conclusions about how the present situation has come about even on his own recollection. He just cannot see it.