FD24P00235 - [2025] EWHC 952 (Fam)

In circumstances set out in the judgment in the Art 12 proceedings, the mother removed the children to England in September 2020. The mother and the children departed Denver on 15 September 2020 and travelled by air to this jurisdiction, arriving at London Heathrow airport on 16 September 2020. The cost of these plane tickets was covered by a domestic violence charity which booked the tickets for the mother on 8 September 2020.

In her statement the mother contends she had no contact with the father after 24 June 2020 and nor did P. However, once again, the father exhibits messages from a social media account that the father asserts is that of the mother to demonstrate such contact. On 11 November 2020, the father received a message from mother’s number asking “Send me naked pic of you”, a message stating “U really love me then send some pictures” and a message stating “Or live show”. On 14 November 2020 the father received a message from the mother’s number seemingly seeking his assistance with P’s behaviour at mealtime. The account also sent a screenshot of what appear to be bank details on 22 November 2020 which, the father asserted in his evidence whilst being cross-examined by Mr Setright KC, was the mother demanding $5,000 if the father wanted to keep talking to the children.

The mother now seeks a finding that once she arrived in United Kingdom there have been a number of occasions when she has encountered ongoing threats and stalking behaviour from associates of the father’s “through his link with the ‘MS13’ gang”. The mother asserts that the father found out where they were living and attempted to make contact with them and, further, that associates of the father’s appeared outside the children’s school and the mother’s sister’s address. The mother specifically alleges, in the context of her alleging that the father used members of MS13 to intimidate her whilst she was in United States, that whilst in asylum accommodation in England she was attacked with a knife by one of the father’s associates in an attempt to kill her, telling her “‘you know what’s up bitch, you need to drop the charges now and if not run very fast bitch as he’s coming to finish you”. On receiving these accounts, the Home Office moved the family on multiple occasions and eventually out of London in 2021. Since arriving in this jurisdiction, the mother and the children have relocated approximately ten times. The mother also claims she was advised by a social worker in 2022 to change the children’s forenames and surnames in order to make it more difficult for the father to locate them. The mother asserts the social worker who advised her to do so was called ‘S’ (as Ms Guha KC pointed out in her closing submissions, S is also the name of one of the investigators working for the office of the District Attorney in Colorado). There is no evidence to corroborate that assertion and the local authority records in fact suggest it was the mother’s idea, the records stating “your mum hopes that one day the [asylum] claim will be successful and she can change your identities”.

I am satisfied that the mother has failed to prove any of the allegations she makes concerning this jurisdiction to the requisite standard. There is no corroborative evidence in respect of any of them. Further, the mother’s accounts have become ever more elaborate. For the first time in her oral evidence the mother alleged that an employee of the asylum hotel where the alleged knife attack occurred was stabbed and that the Metropolitan Police Service are investigating the incident. Again, there is no corroborating evidence before the court to demonstrate that incident ever occurred and the mother has made no attempt to obtain any. The mother also claimed in her asylum interview on 10 September 2021 that the police “said they are looking for him but because he did not touch or hurt me there is nothing to worry about”. In her statement, the mother states that “I believe that the Metropolitan Police in London did arrest the person who attacked me and then asked if I wanted to press charges against him and I said no.” There is no evidence to support her claim that the MPS arrested a foreign gang member attempting an assassination on UK soil but acquiesced in the mother’s decision not to press charges, even though someone else was the alleged victim of a stabbing.