Case No. EWFC-85

69.This allegation is in 2 parts: that the father allowed Xavier to play an unsuitable video game and that the father made a comment to Yasmin including reference to a ‘new mummy’. The mother asserts that the father has mentally abused his children through these incidents. 70.The allegation about the video game is that this happened ‘once’ (M’s first statement para 22, p 155). The father accepts that Xavier played a game involving the unsuitable killing of animals, but says he had taken steps to put age-inappropriate games away and that Xavier must have found this one. I note that the mother was in the house when the game was played and it must also be her responsibility to supervise Xavier. In my judgement there is no evidential link shown between Xavier’s behaviour at school in lacking empathy and this one occasion of exposure to an unsuitable game. Whilst Xavier himself reports his father as being more permissive in allowing him to play video games (describing this positively at p246), there is no evidence that could possibly support a conclusion that the father’s approach to Xavier’s gaming could amount to ‘mental abuse’. 71.The mother was not present when anything was said to Yasmin about a ‘new mummy’ and so can only report Yasmin’s own comments to her. The father denies having said any such thing or having shown Y any picture of a ‘new mummy’. The question for me to determine is not whether Yasmin said something to her mother about having a new mummy and the old one going to the police station, but whether the father said something to Yasmin that should be construed as emotional abuse. 72.This father moved out of the house when the parents’ relationship broke down, to enable the children and their mother to remain there. He has patiently cooperated with the court process in the more than 2 years it has taken for his application to get this far, not seeking to disturb the children’s arrangements with their mother. He denies making the comments and the mother was not present to hear them. I do not find the allegation proved.