Case No. EWFC-82

12The mother is Spanish. The father’s family is Jamaican by origin, but he is British and was born and has always lived here. They met in August 2019 at a reggae festival in Spain and had what they both describe as a fling during the course of that festival. The relationship ended either at the end of that festival or shortly thereafter, but in September 2019 the mother realised that she was pregnant and made contact with the father and they decided to resume their relationship. 13They were both living in separate countries, but there were meetings prior to the birth of P. In particular, they met in October 2019 when the mother came here for a long weekend. The mother says that the first allegation she makes against the father occurred during that weekend when she says that she provoked him in some way, he did not like her attitude and he pushed her to the floor when she was three months’ pregnant. The father denies that incident occurred and I will obviously deal with it in the course of my findings. 14They met again in November 2019, I believe for a week, in England and then the father went to Spain between 28 December 2019 and 10 January 2020 where he says that he received a very warm welcome from the mother’s family. 15The father then travelled to Spain again on 21 April 2020 to be with the mother in the period leading up to P’s birth and they lived together in Spain in the maternal family home up until P’s birth and thereafter until 25 July 2020 when they left for the United Kingdom. One of the plans was to ensure that P had dual nationality and there were issues with the mother acquiring pre-settled status. The second incident relied upon occurred during the period of stay in Spain by the father on 12 July 2020 in his car. Again, I will deal with that in more detail later in this judgment. 16When the parents came back to England, I am quite satisfied that the environment can properly be described as a toxic one. These parents had never lived together for any substantial period; they probably did not even know each other very well. The mother was wholly isolated here because, other than the father and his family, she knew no one and all her family were in Spain. The father has a small studio flat, and they were confined together in the flat pretty much 24/7 because of the then lockdown. They had a new baby, they were both first time parents and I am satisfied that they are both quite volatile individuals. So that combination of factors together created an environment which was, in my judgment, detrimental to the welfare of this very new baby. It is common ground between them that there were frequent arguments and, as I have said, the father has accepted that that toxic arguing would have caused P significant emotional harm. 17There were then further allegations of domestic abuse by the mother, in particular on 13 November 2020 and on 29 January 2021. During the period of the summer leading into the autumn, the mother was very keen indeed to return to Spain. As I have said, she felt isolated and unhappy here and I was required to determine certain facts in November last year when I was dealing with the question of habitual residence. I found as part of my judgment that the father withheld P’s passport from the mother and I disbelieved him when he said that the passport was available on a table in a file for the mother to access. I do not have a note of my judgment, although I did ask for one, but it is submitted by Ms Wilson that this behaviour was an example of controlling behaviour by the father and I agree. 18I also, as I have said, found the father to be untruthful on that occasion and that is a factor which I need to take into account when looking at his evidence today, although of course it does not follow because he was untruthful on that occasion that he has been untruthful during this hearing. 19Following the incident on 29 January 2021, the mother felt that the relationship had no future. She left the father’s home and went to stay initially for one night with the father’s niece, and then moved on to stay with his sister, for about a month. 20I should add that during the period, when she was staying with his sister, the father was attending on a virtually daily basis to see P and it is not suggested in fact that there was any particular incident of concern during that period. But no doubt things would have been calmed by the fact that there was a third party, namely the father’s sister, present. 21On 28 February the mother made a report to the police. When she made her report to the police, she had no interpreter; her English is reasonable, but not particularly fluent; she has had the assistance of an interpreter throughout this hearing. She made it clear that she did not wish for the father to be arrested. She wanted the incidents recorded and the police’s impression was that, primarily, she wanted help to return to Spain. 22The father was then arrested on 3 March 2021. It is said that because the father had been arrested at the behest of the mother, or as a result of her complaints, that the paternal family turned against the mother and effectively evicted her from the sister’s property, throwing out her belongings. That is in issue by the paternal family and it is not necessary for me to make any findings about the precise circumstances relating to that. 23The case was closed by the police. The mother was unwilling to make a formal statement or to support a prosecution and they took the view that it was one person’s word against the other. The father was, however, subject to a domestic violence protection notice and then the Magistrates’ Court made a domestic violence protection order for four weeks from about 6 March. 24The local authority had become involved as a result of the mother’s report to the police and, on their advice, the mother made an application for a non-molestation order on 29 March 2021. In fact, within a very short time she withdrew that application on 7 April 2021. 25On 7 March she sought disclosure from the police under Claire’s Law and on 10 March she was moved to emergency accommodation. 26The father, meanwhile, brought private law proceedings on 15 March seeking, amongst other things, a prohibited steps order preventing the child from being removed from the jurisdiction and that was granted on 23 March. 27Meanwhile, the mother had made contact with the father and they had met up to enable the father to see P and, on 15 April, the mother returned to the father’s home. It does not appear that the authorities were aware of that and, in particular, when the social worker spoke to the father on 21 April he made no mention of the mother being in his home. He says that the social worker abruptly ended that phone conversation, but, nevertheless, she was not advised that the mother was there. 28The father describes the mother behaving strangely in the day or so before the episode of 22 April and she describes herself as feeling very strange and effectively mentally unwell. 29On 22 April in the morning, the mother was feeding P and the father came in to find that the mother was attacking P by striking at his chest with an implement which the father says was a paring knife. The mother is unable to say what it was, it could have been a knife or some scissors. 30The father, rather than calling the emergency services and/or the police, initially called on his family members - his sister in particular - and a call was made to his solicitors who then, understandably, advised for the police and the emergency services to be called. 31P, fortunately, sustained only what have been described as either four or five superficial perforations on the middle of his chest and it is accepted by Ms Wilson on behalf of the mother that those must have been caused in the incident. The father describes P as being inconsolable as a result of this incident. The mother was arrested and then was sectioned under s.2 of the Mental Health Act and it was this alarming event which was the precipitating factor for the local authority to bring care proceedings. 32P had remained living with the paternal family, but, on 6 May 2021, an interim care order was made and P has been in foster care now for the best part of a year. 33The mother was discharged from the s.2 in mid-May at some point and then moved, I believe, to two successive recovery centres. 34The parties have had the benefit of a significant amount of assessments. The father has been assessed by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Dr Campbell, who has also produced an addendum report. The mother has been assessed by Dr McClintock, who has produced a full psychiatric report. In addition, there have been a number of family members assessed as well, in particular the maternal grandparents, who were assessed in Spain. 35The local authority care plan, which I will be considering for the rest of this week, is for P to return with his mother to Spain to live together with the maternal grandparents and for they, together with the mother, to hold a child arrangements order, namely, a “lives with” order. The father strongly disputes that care plan and seeks for P to live with him. 36Before I make my findings on the precise incidents, I will deal with my findings about the parties generally and the impression they made on me. The mother gave her evidence in a clear way. She gave no sign of having any mental health difficulties and presented as well. She gave an account which was consistent. She was not undermined in any meaningful way under cross examination and, in my view, she has given a broadly consistent account over time. I have read all of the police disclosure and, although she had the disadvantage of not having an interpreter for the early visits to the police, the account that she gives is broadly consistent. 37Generally, I found her to be an honest witness. That does not mean that I was satisfied she was telling me the truth on everything. An example is that, when she was found to be mentally unwell in Spain in August 2017, it was thought by the doctors there that the psychosis was likely to be induced by use of marijuana or cannabis. She told me in evidence that she was not using heavily and that she was only smoking one joint a day during the festival where she became ill, but I note she told the parenting assessor that she was using heavily. A second example is in relation to her evidence about what professionals saw to be a deterioration of her mental health in May 2021. There were concerns by staff at the centre where she was living that she was not taking her medication properly. She has always been very against the medication, she does not like the effects on her. I was not satisfied that she was necessarily telling me the whole truth about what happened during that period in particular in relation to her medication and that would certainly explain a relapse. But having said that, more generally, I found her evidence to be credible. 38Other factors that I rely upon in reaching that conclusion are these: I found that she did not seek to exaggerate her case against the father and was fair in a number of the concessions that she made. For example, she told me that the incident where the father put his hand round her neck that he did not keep his hand or hands there for a long time, he removed them quickly - she gave the estimate of a minute - but I do not believe from the rest of her description that it was anything like that long and that this was more about her difficulty in assessing time. Further, when she spoke about the incident in Spain in the car in July 2020 she said that she could not be sure whether the father intended to injure her or not. Those concessions suggested to me that she was being fair and not seeking to embellish her allegations. 39I also take into account that, after the incident of 29 January 2021, she actually felt that she had to leave the father’s address and one must ask whether someone with nowhere secure to go would have left the address if little or nothing had happened and I take that into account as well. 40The fact that she did not want to see the father prosecuted, in my judgment, is another factor which lends weight to her credibility. If someone is making malicious allegations, my experience is that they would be pressing the police to take action. She was concerned about the effect of an arrest on the father’s relationship with P and that does not suggest to me that this is someone making malicious allegations. 41The text message that she sent to the father’s niece after the incident of 29 January further suggests clearly, as contemporaneous evidence, that something which she found disturbing or distressing had occurred. 42Turning to the father’s evidence, he gave evidence in a clear way. Whilst he became increasingly passionate in speaking, in particular, about the events of 22 April and can be described as perhaps becoming assertive in his evidence, I did not detect any aggression in the way he gave evidence. However, in common with both Dr Campbell and the guardian, I found that he tended to minimise his responsibility and was unwilling or reluctant to acknowledge the role he had played in the events which unfolded, although as I have said he did ultimately make the concession that the arguments between the parents would have caused P harm. 43I have to consider the evidence of Dr Campbell and the issue of propensity. The father has an unfortunate forensic history. The PNC that I have seen refers to fourteen convictions for thirty-two offences going back to when he was fourteen. Seven of those convictions relate to offences against the person. It is pointed out, quite properly, on his behalf that the last conviction related to an event or events in 2014 - the conviction being in 2015 - and that he has not had any criminal convictions since that period and that is plainly right. However, Dr Campbell takes the view that the long history of offending and in particular offending in the context of domestic abuse or aggression are relevant. What he says at para.53 is this (E142): “I believe his presentation and history indicate that he poses a risk of interpersonal aggression and very possibly some form of violence including in the presence of his son. This is on the basis of his reported history of such problems along with little evidence that as yet he has undergone any process of change. I would judge that the level of risk is medium.”44Dr Campbell produced an addendum report answering, in particular, a number of points made on behalf of the father where he accepted that there had been a process of maturation in that the father was more aware of his triggers and would seek not to react to provocation in an aggressive way, but he referred to his view that that was not always successful and he pointed out that the relationship with the mother in common with previous relationships where there had been domestic abuse involved allegations by her of domestic abuse. 45I do not propose to make a comparison or look at any alleged similarity in his behaviour in relation, for example, to the last conviction in 2015 where he was convicted of harassment of a previous partner, but I do take into account as some support for the mother’s case that he does have this history of aggression in interpersonal relationships when I consider her allegations. In my view, whilst this is not primarily the basis for my findings, it must provide some support for her allegations that she was subjected to similar behaviour. 46I do accept, as I have said, that the father has made some changes, as Dr Campbell did, but it seems to me that there is still some way to go. As I have said, his lack of acknowledgment of responsibility for his actions has been of concern to the guardian, to Dr Campbell and to myself. 47I also found concerning his very strident suggestions, which he has made in writing and during this hearing, that the mother has admitted to being an attempted murderer and has referred to her as such and as a kidnapper to professionals including the guardian. Of course, the incident of 22 April must have been deeply distressing to him - he is a loving father - but it seems to me to demonstrate a lack of empathy and understanding that this was a woman who was seriously mentally ill and her actions took place within the context of that psychotic episode. It is also of concern that he has been pressing so heavily, as indicated by his recent communication with the officer in the case, for the mother to be prosecuted. As I have said, I find those statements and actions to be concerning. 48I also found some of his explanations to be less than credible, for example, of the mother tripping over her own flip flop or falling from the sofa. There was a repetition of explanations involving the mother inadvertently causing herself to suffer the fall or otherwise being responsible for her own injuries and, as Ms Brown says, these are the sort of explanations that are familiar to me in cases of domestic abuse where someone is in denial about their behaviour. 49I will turn now to consider the specific allegations that are made. The first allegation, as I have said, is October 2019 where the mother says that the father pushed her to the floor. She has repeated these allegations consistently, including to the police. She was three months’ pregnant at the time. The father says that the mother was gesticulating in his face and, as she was coming towards him and he moving backwards, she tripped over her flip flop and he tried to break her fall. As I have said, there is something of a theme here of the mother being the author of her own misfortunes. 50Ms Hasan relies upon texts that the mother sent to the father both before and after this long weekend, which are very loving in tone and make no reference at all to this incident. Ms Brown on the other hand refers me to a number of plausible explanations for the mother drawing a veil over the incident: She was pregnant; this was early in the relationship, she plainly wanted the relationship to continue; she may have regarded this as a one off being prepared to give the father the benefit of the doubt; and I can see a number of reasons why she may not have wished to refer to that episode in her texts. 51I am satisfied that the incident did occur as the mother described and it is a particular concern because, obviously, she was in the early stages of pregnancy. I have already said that I find both parents to be of a somewhat volatile disposition. The father, however, in my view, still has a short fuse and when the mother does start berating him or raising her voice or (to use his words) disrespecting him, I find that on this occasion as on others he has been provoked and unable to regulate himself not to use physical aggression. 52The next incident is the incident in Spain on 12 July 2020. This was an incident where the father was driving on an A road or motorway without a hard shoulder with the mother in the back and P next to her in a car seat and he was driving at about 80km per hour. Again, they had an argument. The father to drown the mother out turned up the radio to a loud volume and the mother told me that she was concerned about the possible impact to the baby and his hearing. She therefore moved from the back of the car through the central gap between the seats in the front to attempt to turn the radio down. She says she did not touch the father. The father says in touching the seat, she pulled on his shoulder. 53She accepted under cross examination by Mr Coutts that this was a potentially dangerous manoeuvre, it would distract his concentration when he was driving on a fast road, and I agree that this was not a sensible manoeuvre and was a potentially dangerous one. 54She then describes the father twice attempting to push her back by throwing his left hand back. She says, on the second occasion, he caught her face. The movement of his hand had some force behind it. Her eye was caught and she started bleeding under her eye. As I have already referred to, she said that she was not sure whether his actions were intentional or not by which I understand her to mean that was this a forceful attempt to move her back perhaps using too much force or was this a deliberate assault on her. The father wears rings on his left hand, I have seen them and it is not disputed that it is likely that the rings or one of them caught her under the eye. 55The father did stop at the next service station - that is not in dispute - to attend to the mother. Her father later took her to hospital, but she did not disclose how she sustained the injury. That is understandable for reasons of not wanting to upset her father or shame or embarrassment and Ms Hasan does not attach any weight to that failure to disclose to the father and the hospital. 56On this occasion, I am prepared to give the father the benefit of the doubt that he was not deliberately seeking to assault her. But what he did do, in my judgment, was to throw his hand back in a way which was overly forceful because he was wound up by what she was doing and this caught her eye. Therefore I find that he was likely to have used more force than he needed to, but this was not a deliberate assault on her. It arose out of her rather foolish behaviour in coming forward to the front of the car in the way I have described. 57The third incident is 13 November 2020. This was yet another argument between this couple. On this occasion, the mother was complaining that the television was on too loud. She describes the father pushing her onto the bed, taking hold of her neck while she was holding P and she described moving herself across the bed to the corner where the bed met two walls. I have already referred to the fact that if she was untruthful, she would not have been fair in describing that the hand around her neck was for a short time only - she could not say if it was one hand or both. She did say on the first occasion that he did not squeeze her neck, but later on in her evidence she said he did. But generally, she was not trying to overegg that occasion and I accept the point made by Ms Brown that her description of what was happening with physical movements of her trying to get herself to the corner of the bed away from the father really suggested she was remembering an experience that she had undergone. 58The father for his part said, effectively, he was acting in defence. The mother was attempting to go at him or hit him. He had to hold her wrists to protect himself from her hitting him. She then attempted to kick him in the genitalia, and she fell back onto the bed. He was able to release her wrists in a fairly short time and she desisted from her assault. I do not accept that account. As I have said, I found the mother’s account with the physical movements in the witness box to be very persuasive and I am satisfied that this incident occurred as she said not least also because she did not seek to overegg the pudding. This was a very troubling incident because any holding of the neck, even if it is for a short time, is frightening and concerning to the court and, of course, the mother was holding P. 59It was said by Ms Hasan that this father would never have exposed P to being directly involved in such an incident. I accept that when he is calm he would never dream of behaving in that way, but the difficulty is when he gets involved in incidents such as these he becomes dysregulated in my view and behaved in a way which he would not behave in if he was in a calm frame of mind. 60In relation to the incident of 29 January 2021, the mother alleges that when she told the father that she wished to return to Spain and remove P that he threatened to kill her if she did so and she has made that allegation consistently. This allegation generally is perhaps of a piece with the findings I made in November about the father controlling the passport and could be seen to be an example of controlling behaviour. I will explain why as I make my findings. 61The mother then texted the father’s niece, saying this was a family emergency and the niece answered by saying (I paraphrase what she said) that she would not herself want to be in such a violent situation and that she would come round. When she came round, the mother was seeking by standing on a sofa to take belongings out for presumably herself and P from a floating cupboard. She says that the father in seeking to stop her from doing that was pulling her by the hair and by her jumper with the result that she fell onto the floor or he pushed her onto the floor. After that occasion, she left with the father’s agreement to stay with the niece for the night. 62The father says that the mother pushed him and she lost her footing on the sofa and fell. Again, another description of the mother causing the incident to herself. 63The niece gave evidence this morning remotely and she told me that things were quite calm when she arrived and that the father had agreed in her presence to the mother leaving for a night to stay with her, but that the parties should meet the next day to discuss issues. She described the mother as being antagonistic by saying that she did not know how long she would be leaving for, a day or two or possibly for good. She said that there was a struggle at the cupboard and that, as a result of that struggle with the father trying to stop her accessing the cupboard and she trying to get clothes, she fell and the father sought to catch her. 64I obviously have to evaluate the niece’s evidence. It is plain from the assessment of her that she thinks very highly of her uncle and is very loyal to him. What was significant to me in her evidence was her reference to the mother potentially kidnapping the child by which she was referring to the mother saying she would be going potentially for longer than a day. The significance of that is that the father has repeatedly referred to the mother as a kidnapper in the context of this incident when she removed P to live with the father’s family for four weeks or so. The fact that the niece used exactly the same terminology, in my judgment, suggests that the perception of the mother by the father is shared by the paternal family and in particular the niece, and I found it significant that she used that word. 65Plainly, there was a struggle at the cupboard because the father did not want the mother to take any more belongings and it would be wholly consistent with that struggle for him to attempt to pull her away from the cupboard to prevent her from accessing the belongings. I found the niece to be slightly sullen in the way she gave her answers and somewhat guarded. As I have said, I consider her attitude towards the mother as described to me to be relevant. I consider that she was giving evidence to support the father, her uncle, to whom she is extremely loyal and I prefer the mother’s evidence about what happened namely that in this struggle at the floating cupboard the father pulled her hair and her jumper and she fell to the ground. 66P would have been present in this very small studio flat for most, if not all, of these incidents and in one incident he was implicated. I am quite satisfied that his exposure to these incidents, in addition to being exposed to very frequent and no doubt loud arguments, would have caused him significant emotional harm. He, as a tiny baby, would have been alarmed and frightened by what he saw and heard his parents saying and doing. 67Turning now to the other allegations in the threshold. I do not propose to say very much more at all about the incident on 22 April; I have already referred to the bare bones of the incident. 68Dr McClintock who assessed the mother expressed particular concern about this incident because P was implicated in the mother’s delusional psychotic thinking. She believed that she had to harm him or even kill him to release her mother or her parents who were in some way embedded within him. I share that concern. I consider it is a very concerning incident because the child was part and parcel of the mother’s delusional thinking. Plainly, even in her delusional state, the mother must have held back because fortunately he suffered only superficial injuries. But I share Dr McClintock’s concern about the aetiology or origin of that incident. 69I am not going to address any other evidence I heard about the mother’s mental health because that forms part of the welfare hearing. I am not going to find conclusively that this was a knife that was used. I do not consider that it makes much difference whether it was a knife or scissors, either could have been used to cause significant harm. Fortunately, whatever was used did not and I say that because I consider that the father has sought to portray the mother in the most negative light in the context of this incident in the way that I have referred to earlier in this judgment. So I refrain from making any specific finding nor is it necessary for me to do so, I have already found that the mother caused the injuries that I have described. 70The other matter that I have to consider concerns the father’s cannabis use. The father is Rastafarian by faith and he makes it clear in his written evidence that his use of cannabis is part of his faith and has a spiritual aspect. He says, and indeed the testing supports the fact, that he has not used cannabis since May (he said March and May at different times, but let us say May) 2021. However, I do have to consider his cannabis use in the period up until these events and in particular when the parents were living together in the flat. Taking the evidence overall, I am satisfied that he was using cannabis frequently and heavily. I say that because there is evidence from different professionals, the police and the hospital in Spain, that the environment which he was in smelt of cannabis and he too smelt of cannabis. I find it very significant that, even the day after the baby was born, he was rolling a joint within the hospital itself, although it is not suggested he smoked the joint in the hospital. But the hospital staff did smell cannabis. 71Equally, immediately after the incident on 22 April, his first reaction when his sister arrived was to go and light up a joint to settle him. In my judgment, that suggests someone who was quite heavily involved with that drug at that time. Again, the police describe the environment and himself as smelling of cannabis. 72The mother also refers to him smoking heavily during the period they lived together and, indeed, the psychiatrists in charge of the mother’s care consider that one potential cause for the psychotic episode may be significant exposure as a passive person to the cannabis in this very small environment. So I am satisfied that the father was using heavily and frequently and that this would inevitably, as a psycho-active drug, have had an impact on his ability to provide care for the child. Obviously, the mother was there to step in but that is a finding which is sought and which I find is made out. 73I consider that I have dealt with all the matters within the threshold, although not perhaps necessarily adopting the precise numbering of each allegation. _________JUDGMENTJUDGE HARRIS: 1.I am giving judgment today at the conclusion of a final hearing in care proceedings concerning a young boy called P, who was born in May 2020 so that he is 23 months of age. 2.In addition to the parties being present with their representatives, I have also given permission by agreement for Ms Chapman, counsel for the Metropolitan Police Service, being present as well as the officer in the case who attends by phone. It is obviously much more convenient for the police and may assist them in their decision-making going forward if they receive the judgment earlier rather than later because they are entitled to see the transcript of the judgment under the Rules. 3.This judgment needs to be read in conjunction with the judgment I gave on Wednesday, 27 April this week, which dealt with the threshold. That judgment also dealt with the factual background and my findings in relation to the parties on their evidence about the threshold and so, therefore, the judgments must be read together. 4.I am dealing now with the welfare stage of the proceedings, having heard further evidence. That evidence is the evidence from Ms Khan, the allocated social worker, and from Ms Gross, the child’s guardian. Both parents were given the opportunity to be recalled to deal with any welfare issues which they did not consider had been covered in their previous evidence. They did not wish to be recalled and I took the view also that it was not necessary and that the evidence before the court was complete. 5.First of all, I will deal with the legal principles which govern this application. It includes an application for permission to remove the child permanently from the jurisdiction which is the local authority care plan for the mother to return to Spain with P, but these are public law proceedings and, whilst there is considerable congruence between the principles applied to relocation hearings in the private law context, the principles applicable to public law proceedings are those that I must apply with an eye to the case law on relocation. 6.P’s welfare is my paramount consideration. I must carry out a welfare evaluation of the internal pros and cons of the competing realistic options and then place those options with their internal pros and cons side by side to make my overriding welfare evaluation on which of those options best promotes P’s welfare. 7.In doing so, I must apply the welfare checklist. I must also have regard to the Art.8 rights of the child and both his parents. The child’s rights, obviously, take precedence over the parents. I must have regard to their rights and also to the question of proportionality. I observe that those principles are very similar to the principles which are applied in relocation proceedings and I refer, in particular, to a very helpful summary of the legal principles relating to such proceedings set out in the judgment of Mr Justice Williams in the case of V v. M [2020] EWHC 488 starting, in particular, from para.43 onwards to para.50 and I have those principles in mind as well. 8.I need, first of all, to deal with two preliminary issues before I go to the substance of my judgment. Firstly, Ms Hasan on behalf of the father has said that in considering the realistic options I need to weigh up the pros and cons of placement with extended paternal family members because they have received positive special guardianship assessments. The other parties submit that the realistic options to be considered are either a placement with the mother in Spain with a shared child arrangements order for her and her parents or a placement with the father in London. 9.I do not consider in the context of this case that placements with the paternal relatives, despite their positive special guardianship assessments, are realistic options to be balanced against a placement with either parent. That is not just because if there is a placement which meet P’s welfare needs with his parents that should obviously be preferred to a placement with other relatives, but also because of the particular circumstances of this case. 10.In relation to the first paternal relative, she has no subsisting relationship with P and has only met him on one or two occasions. She lives away from where the father and the rest of the paternal family live. That would mean that P would be away from the base of the wider paternal family including the father. 11.The mother has said that she would stay in this country if P were not placed with her. I consider that that would place her mental health at significant risk, and I will deal with that aspect in more detail when I deal with the father’s case, and that it is unrealistic to expect her to remain in this country. If her mental health were affected that would obviously have an impact upon her relationship with P, albeit not as a parent with whom the child lives full time. 12.Further, the placement would have to be tested out for a period of at least twelve weeks which would be productive of further delay in proceedings which have already endured for a year and it may or may not be successful given that the first paternal relative and P have no subsisting relationship. 13.In relation to the second paternal relative, as I have said, she too had a positive special guardianship assessment. She knows P better than the first paternal relative and has had a number of meetings with him over his short life. But she has never had the full time care of a child. Again, there would need to be a placement with her and I note that the special guardianship assessment refers to a placement with her under a Family and Friends Kinship arrangement (i.e. under an interim care order) before consideration could be given to a special guardianship application after, I believe, it is suggested about six months. So the same issue with the mother having to remain here would apply and, again, that placement is untested. It may or may not be successful, so productive of further delay for P as well as uncertainty. 14.Finally, there is an issue in this case which I will return to in the judgment as to the ability of the paternal family to promote the relationship with the mother and to provide P with a sensitive and balanced narrative of his life history to date. Concerns about those issues, which were not covered in the special guardianship assessments, are matters I will consider when considering the father and the mother’s case. So for all those reasons, I am not going to conduct an evaluation of those two possible placements as realistic options. 15.The second point that I need to deal with before I deal with the substance of the matter is an important point. The thrust of Ms Hasan’s case put very eloquently on behalf on the father is that he and his family have a very powerful sense of grievance in relation to how he has been treated in the context of these proceedings. He considers that he has been discriminated against by the actions of the local authority and that he has been marginalised and not taken seriously by them as an option for P’s care, and he says that that has been their stance from the beginning and that has not changed. 16.Ms Hasan referred me in the course of the evidence to a letter to the Spanish Consulate sent by the previous social worker, which is to be found at F62-F63. I do not need to quote from that email, but what it was doing was asking for an urgent passport for P - who was correctly said to be Spanish born - to be urgently repatriated to his home in Spain. It goes on to say: “The mother and baby are currently in the United Kingdom and fleeing domestic violence from the baby’s father. The police in the United Kingdom have also been involved.”17.That raises a number of concerns because it does not reflect any understanding of the legal structure underpinning P and his life. For example, there is no consideration of whether P may be habitually resident here which would give this court jurisdiction over him and there is no consideration of the father’s position as a parent with parental responsibility. This is something which the local authority, in my view, need to address with their social workers and, indeed, I have seen a similar approach occurring in other cases. 18.Therefore, the father says the local authority have not changed their stance since this original letter. He relies too upon the parenting assessment carried out by the allocated social worker, which he says made assumptions on a number of occasions in the course of that assessment that domestic abuse perpetrated by him against the mother was an established fact and I refer to E194, E197 and in particular E198 of that report. To quote from E198 only, it says, amongst other things: “On the account provided by the mother it is highly likely that P could be caught in the crossfire of domestic violence between the mother and the father which could result in serious harm.”Under the analysis of “Protective and Risk Factors”, it says: “The father lacks insight and has minimised the domestic violence which has occurred in his relationship with the mother”That is one of a number of examples. Again, the local authority need to be cognisant of the fact that they should not be making assumptions before findings are made or they should prepare a report on an either or basis. Thus I accept that there are justifiable concerns about that issue and the letter to the Consulate. 19.Having said that, after a detailed analysis of the evidence, I have made clear findings that the father has been responsible for domestic abuse perpetrated against the mother and I have found virtually all of what she has alleged to be true. Therefore, the argument that the report is undermined by the matters I have referred to becomes less powerful because in the event findings were made and domestic abuse is a risk in the case. 20.Having said all of that, I note that there has been complete parity in the treatment of the parents in relation to their contact with P. Both of them have enjoyed contact at a high level on three occasions per week for the same time period and, indeed, recently, the restrictions on the father’s contact have been loosened something which was a cause of great distress to the mother because hers had not, as I understand it. So whilst these matters are matters to be deprecated and should be picked up by the local authority for future cases, I do not find that their case as a whole is undermined or fatally flawed by them. 21.I have carried out an objective evaluation of all the facts and I take into account the matters which I have just referred to in doing so. As I have said, I do not consider in other respects that the father has been discriminated against. The point about contact and the desire to promote both parents’ relationships with P equally being a point in mind. So therefore, while there are flaws as I have indicated, I do not consider that this is a case where the local authority has simply dismissed the father out of hand in the way that is suggested. 22.I will now turn to the substance of my judgment and I am going to consider the case on the basis of the welfare checklist. I am going to then bring together the threads and the findings I have made in the context of the welfare checklist to carry out my comparative evaluation of the two competing options.