Introduction
1.This is an application made by Thames Valley Police for disclosure to them and to the Crown Prosecution Service, of documents from private law proceedings between the respondents, Ms F (the mother) and Mr G (the father).2.The mother and father were married in 2011. They separated in June 2021 following an incident, captured on CCTV within the family home, when the father assaulted the mother by strangulation. He subsequently pleaded guilty to an offence of assault. He was made subject to a restraining order against the mother, to last indefinitely, and providing that he was not to go within 100 metres of her home address. 3.The family proceedings commenced in September 2021. The Court was concerned with cross-applications from each of the respondents. The proceedings came to an end on 20 September 2022. The local authority had prepared a section 7 report for the Court. The author of the report concluded that the children had witnessed serious domestic abuse perpetrated by the father towards the mother over a period of time, and had also experienced abuse directly from him. The author of the report recommended that the father should not have any caring responsibilities for the children, and that the children should not have any contact with their father at all, not even supervised contact. 4.The father did not attend the Court hearing on 20 September 2022, but wrote an email to the Court in which he criticised social services for what he said was an unfair and biased investigation, said that the CCTV footage viewed had been ‘misconstrued’, and doubted that the views expressed by the children were truly their own. He said that the mother had illegally obtained recordings of his private conversations, and that it was this evidence that was the foundation of the social services’ recommendations. Stating that he had lost faith in the system, he said that he wished to withdraw his application, and would consent to an order reflecting social services’ recommendations.5.I gave a short judgment, having reviewed the evidence in the case, including CCTV footage of the assault, the section 7 report and the parties’ statements. I found the social services’ report to be thorough, balanced and based on a detailed review of all the evidence. I made orders in line with their recommendations, providing that the father should not have any contact with his children, due to the risks he posed to both them and their mother, and consistent with the girls’ own wishes and feelings, based on their own experiences of him. I made a prohibited steps order to prevent the father from removing the children from their mother’s care. 6.In addition I made a non-molestation order against the father. Recordings obtained by the mother and handed to the police and social services included material in which it is said he is heard to make threats to kill the mother. It is alleged that he discusses making plans to buy a car to run her over, or to ‘kill that cunt’, and that on another occasion he is heard to say once the proceedings are over, he is ‘going to fucking stab her … I want to see the fear in her eyes’. It is alleged that members of his family discuss killing her. Elsewhere in the recordings, he is said to discuss making plans to relocate to [country anonymised], taking the children with him. 7.I listed a return date on 29 September 2022 to give the father an opportunity to set aside or vary this order, but he did not attend that hearing. The non-molestation order remains in force.