FD24P00235 - [2025] EWHC 952 (Fam)

As with the alleged incident on 26 April 2017, the parties’ account of events subsequent to 26 April 2017 and specifically the circumstances in which the family came to be in Colorado are diametrically opposed. On the mother’s case, as a victim of domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour by the father, she fled Florida for Colorado with the children, via Texas, without informing the father and evaded the father in Colorado for two years before the father, with the assistance of his criminal associates, located them again. On the father’s case, the parents agreed to move to Colorado after the mother expressed a desire to do so, moved their belongings to that area and continued to live and work as a family there until their relationship broke down at a point where mother’s behaviour grew more extreme, at which point the father took steps towards separation and divorce.

On the mother’s case, she remained at the refuge in Miami from 26 April 2017 until she left Florida for Colorado, travelling via Texas. During this journey, the mother alleges that she “was threatened at various times by gang members approaching me and making threats that [the father] knew where I was. I also received calls from blocked numbers and messages which I believed to be from him. I reported these threats to the local police departments.” The mother has, however, adduced no evidence either of an extended stay in the refuge, contrary to the evidence of the paternal grandmother, or of the reports of being threatened by MS13 that she allegedly made to local police departments.

The mother has contended that the father did not know she was leaving for Colorado. When speaking to Police Officer M in Colorado on 26 June 2020 the mother stated that in 2017 she left Florida and came to Colorado to get away from the father and that she did not tell him where she was going because she did not want him to find her. On 10 August 2020 the mother told the Assistant District Attorney that she had asked the judge in Miami if she could move to another state and that the father did not know she was moving to Colorado. However, in his application to dismiss the civil injunction dated 3 July 2017 the father sets out his plan to move to North Colorado with the mother, making plain that he knew at that time that Colorado was the mother’s intended destination.

Within the foregoing context, the mother seeks the following findings in respect of her departure from Miami for Colorado via Texas:

Against this, the father asserts that after the family had moved together to Colorado, in part because the mother was being investigated for perjury arising from the allegations she had made against the father on 26 April 2017 that she had then withdrawn. The father contends that the family thereafter lived together in Colorado between 2017 and 2020, although his employment as a commercial truck driver often meant that he was away with work for periods of time.

In her statement, the paternal grandmother states that at the end of 2017 the mother and father left for Colorado, the mother driving the children in the family car and the father following in a commercial truck with the family’s belongings. During the course of her oral evidence, the paternal grandmother stated that whilst the mother did spend two days in a refuge following the alleged incident on 26 April 2017, the mother thereafter returned to the paternal grandmother’s property. The paternal grandmother stated that the mother, father and children stayed with her for a further seven months in circumstances where each parent had lost their job and had debts arising out of their legal costs following the alleged incident on 26 April 2017, before moving to Colorado together. Within this context, the paternal grandmother further asserts that the family celebrated the mother’s birthday on 9 November 2017 at the paternal grandmother’s property. The father produces a photo and a video which he says depicts that celebration. The paternal grandmother, who is in the video, confirmed that this was a celebration of the mother’s birthday. The mother denied this and states that the video is not of her birthday party, that she has never celebrated her birthday, that she does not know for certain when her birthday is and, further, that the father has never celebrated the children’s birthdays. The mother made these assertions notwithstanding that she is pictured sitting directly in front of the birthday cake and that the video records people singing ‘Happy Birthday’ with the mother seated in front of the cake and not herself singing.

I am not satisfied on the evidence that the mother has demonstrated on the balance of probabilities that the mother “fled” Miami following the alleged incident on 26 April 2017, that the mother encountered ongoing threats and stalking behaviour from associates of the father through his links to MS13, that the mother was informed that the father knew the whereabouts of her and the children or that the father sent messages to the mother and she received calls from “blocked” phone numbers. Rather, having regard to the evidence before the court, I am satisfied that the mother moved back into the paternal grandmother’s home with the father almost immediately after making allegations against him on 26 April 2017. Thereafter, I am satisfied that the parents and children remained with the paternal grandmother until they moved to Colorado. On the evidence before the court, I am satisfied that the family moved together to Colorado, the parents having taken the joint decision to do so.

A particular feature of the mother’s case is her contention that after she left Miami neither she nor the children had any contact with the father, direct or indirect, from 2017 up until the incident that occurred on or around 23 or 24 June 2020 after, on the mother’s case, the father located her in Colorado. Again, the mother’s evidence is wholly inconsistent in this regard.

On the 911 call made by the mother on 24 June 2020, she told the emergency operator that the father had tracked her to Colorado and she believed he was tracking her phone. She further alleged that he “chased me” after she had left Florida to be safe. By contrast, she also told the 911 operator on 24 June 2020 that the father had been looking for a job in Colorado and was blaming her for his inability to secure one, at the same time as giving the operator the details of the company for whom the father worked. When speaking to medics following the incident on 24 June 2020, the mother stated that she had left the father after them living together for the past year.

The father asserts that throughout the period between 2017 and 2020 he had constant contact with the children at home and that, when he was away, he maintained indirect contact with both the mother and the children by way of phone calls, text messages, WhatsApp messages and Facebook Messenger. The father’s assertion is corroborated by other evidence. The father exhibits to his evidence bank statements that show payments from his account to the account of the mother during 2017 and 2018. He also exhibits documents from his bank and payslips showing his address as the address of the family home in Aurora, Colorado. The father produces a series of photos that he relies on as evidence of a happy family life in Colorado with the mother and the two children between 2017 and 2020. The mother asserts that the large majority of these photographs do not depict what the father asserts, alleging that the father has doctored them, as he is capable of Photoshopping photographs and editing official documents. The mother sought to explain the father’s possession of photographs to enable alteration by alleging that he stole a photo album belonging to the mother. The father denies both stealing a photograph album and altering any photographs. In these circumstances, the court permitted the instruction of CYFOR to prepare a report examining the photographs in dispute.

In summary, and subject to certain caveats that I am satisfied are not forensically significant in the current context, the report demonstrates that each of the photographs produced by the father comprises an EXIF (‘Exchangeable Image File Format’) file taken on the father’s mobile phone on the date the father says it was taken and with no evidence of the photographs having been the subject of alteration. In addition to the children appearing on the photographs to be broadly of an age consistent with the claimed date of the photos, on the basis of the expert report the photographs relied on by the father were taken on the father’s mobile phone during the period when the mother contends he did not know where she and the children were and was having no direct or indirect contact with the children. They include the following:

The father also exhibits to his statement a series of videos depicting activities with the mother and the children during the period between 2017 and 2020 when the mother contends he did not know where she and the children were and was having no direct or indirect contact with the children, which include:

The father also exhibits to his statement of evidence a series of messages that he contends were sent to him by the mother during the period when the mother contends the father did not know where she and the children were and was having no direct or indirect contact with her or the children. The messages include those sent from a mobile telephone number ending 5678 from ‘M’. The mother conceded during her oral evidence that the father called her ‘M’ and, subject to the matters addressed below, that the number ending 5678 was her telephone number. The father also produced messages sent from an account called “F”, which he ascribes to the mother. Again, the messages exhibited by the father span the period when the mother contends he did not know where she and the children were and was having no direct or indirect contact with the children. They include the following:

Once again the mother flatly denies that she sent these messages to the father. On behalf of the children, Mr Gration demonstrated during his cross-examination of the mother that she had used the 5678 number in Miami, taking her to the application to dismiss the civil injunction obtained by the mother in 2017 on which she had given the 5678 number. As I have noted, the mother conceded that the number ending 5678 was then her telephone number. In an effort to demonstrate that the messages the father exhibits to his statement from the 5678 number were fabricated by him, the mother then claimed that she stopped using the 5678 number in 2017 when she left for Colorado. She was not able to recall the number she used thereafter but claimed during cross-examination that she was informed by Sprint Mobile that the 5678 number had been allocated to someone else and was not available. However, having drawn that claim from the mother, Mr Gration proceeded to demonstrate that during the alleged incident on 24 June 2020 the mother had given the 5678 number as her contact number to the ambulance crew, the Colorado police and the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services. In the child welfare report conducted by the Colorado Department of Human Services dated 9 July 2020, the mother gave the 5678 number as her “Primary” phone number. Thereafter, the mother struggled to explain why, in the context of alleging a grave incident of domestic abuse, rape and the sexual abuse of the children, she had given to officials a contact number that she claimed she had not used in nearly three years. I further note that in the 911 call made by the mother on 24 June 2020 she gave the 5678 number when asked for her phone number by the emergency operator.

Having regard to the foregoing evidence, I am satisfied that the mother and the father lived as a family in Colorado between 2017 and the beginning of 2020 and that the mother and father were in regular communication via telephone, messaging and social media during that period. I am further satisfied that the father continued to participate fully in family life and to have regular contact with the children when away at work. Finally, I am satisfied that by claiming that she had stopped using the 5678 number in 2017 when she left for Colorado, that she was not able to recall the number she used thereafter and that she had been informed by Sprint Mobile that the 5678 number had been allocated to someone else and was not available, the mother lied and was seeking to mislead the court as to the nature and extent of her relationship with, and her communication with the father during this period and as to the nature and extent of his involvement with the children.

The messages received by the father from the mother’s number indicate that relations between the parents were increasingly strained. The messages from the mother’s accounts include messages demanding the father return home. In her statement the paternal grandmother describes visiting the family in Colorado in 2018 and noticing the mother was combative and verbally abusive towards the father and that the father would endeavour to avoid the mother. Prior to this, the paternal grandmother states she would receive communications in 2018 from the mother stating the father better show up soon. This tends to corroborate messages sent by the mother to the father in which the mother threatens to contact the paternal grandmother if the father does not answer his phone. The documents from Colorado Human Services indicate that as at 24 June 2020 there was an assessment open in respect of the family in response to concerns regarding domestic violence. During this period, the father states that he began working a lot and returning only to take the children out. Ultimately, he requested a divorce.