[2025] EWHC 2637 (Fam)

I reject these allegations. I am unable to accept the father’s evidence nor that of his supporting witnesses for reasons I have already given.

I have considered very carefully the allegations which A herself has made to FC and to professionals. I do not think the things she has said can safely be relied upon, as:

I accept Ms Ancliffe KC’s submission that A’s allegations must be looked at through the lens of a child who has openly said that she was coached and who then sought to retract her allegations.

I have thought especially carefully about the physical reactions displayed by A when, for example, she dropped food and her recent description of being roughly disciplined after spilling nail varnish on a dress. FC’s evidence was that the physical reaction appeared to be genuine as opposed to the product of coaching. On balance, I consider it likely that A may have been disciplined harshly by the mother at times but I am unable to find that she did so at a level which caused A significant harm. I consider that her physical reactions are likely to be the product of a combination of her lived experiences and the extreme level of coaching to which she has been subjected.

The father seeks to rely on three audio recordings he has produced which he says are of conversations between himself and the mother. The recordings, he says, were made on dates in March and May 2023 when he was in England. In fact, as his passport shows, he returned to Pakistan in April 2023. I am unable to place any reliance upon these recordings as I am not satisfied that they are genuine. The father, as I have found, has been seriously dishonest in these proceedings including procuring witnesses to lie for him and falsifying documents. I find it unlikely, as he claims, that he would suddenly have come across these recordings on his phone, recordings which on his case he was unaware that he had even made as they occurred accidentally. Without clear analysis as to their authenticity from a forensic examiner I am not prepared to accept that they are genuine. By March 2023 the parents had been separated for over 2 years and I also consider it unlikely that they would have held the types of conversation the father claims to have recorded. Moreover, even if they were genuine, I am far from satisfied that the recordings capture the mother making the types of admissions asserted by the father. The whole conversation seems to be conducted in a manner which is difficult to follow and causes me to wonder whether it has been accurately transcribed and translated. It does, however, have the flavour of the male person seeking to lead or entrap the female person into making admissions. Some of her answers – said by the father to be admissions – are in reality repetitions of propositions put to her and consistent with being expressions of incredulity just as much as admissions.

The father has also produced a recording of A purportedly making allegations of abuse against the mother after she had been abducted from her mother’s care. Again, without clear forensic proof, I am not prepared to accept that this is a genuine recording given the other findings I have made about the father. If, however, it is genuine, in my judgement it strongly corroborates the finding I make below about the father having coached A into making false allegations against the mother. I could attach no weight to it at all as evidence of the mother’s abuse.

I give no weight to the content of reports made by the father to the police about the mother. Even if they are genuine documents (which is open to serious doubt) anything reported by him is plainly self-serving and unreliable.

Accordingly, for the avoidance of doubt, I make no findings in respect of the allegations that the mother was physically or verbally abusive to A or that she forced her to eat spicy food.

I accept the mother’s evidence that from an early stage of the marriage she was treated abusively by the father when he was in Pakistan. I find that she was subjected on a regular basis to physical and verbal abuse, which continued throughout the marriage and after the parties’ separation. The abuse included being hit, pinched, smacked and kicked. He humiliated the mother and caused her to feel trapped in the marriage. A was exposed to this abuse at times when the parents were together and suffered significant emotional harm as a result.

The mother’s case is consistent with the evidence of AD about her own mother’s treatment by the father. It is also consistent with the exceptionally violent manner in which the father abducted A, an allegation I find to be established.

In my judgement, the father’s abusive behaviour towards the mother is likely to have been the cause of the incident on 26 December 2020. I believe that, against a background of abuse, there was a precipitating incident which caused the mother’s brothers to intervene to protect their sister.

I am unable to make any findings about the allegations of financial abuse.

For the purposes of these proceedings it is unnecessary for me to make findings as to whether the parties are divorced and/or the mother has remarried. I decline to do so. Were these to be issues requiring resolution, better evidence would be required, including potentially expert evidence.

On this date the father was assaulted very violently by the mother’s brothers. He sustained two broken legs, as is corroborated by the medical records that have been produced.

I have already rejected the mother’s case that her revealing the existence of the video to her brothers was a precipitating cause.

In my judgement, what is most likely to have occurred is as follows.

I accept the mother’s evidence that on the morning of 26 December 2020 she was subjected to an instance of domestic abuse (this may have involved the use of a pan as A appears to recall, although it is unnecessary for me to make precise findings about this). I also accept the mother’s evidence that she and A were evicted from home by the father and going to the home of MGM (this is also supported by what A appears to recall although given her young age at the time I cannot place much reliance upon this). What happened between the parents is likely to have been significant, given the severity of what followed.

In my judgement, the mother is likely to have spoken in detail to her family about what had occurred against a background where she had been experiencing domestic abuse for some time. As the mother said in her oral evidence, her brothers will have become angry. Part of the anger may have been triggered by the family’s guilt in having played a part in arranging the marriage.

As a result, the brothers accompanied by MGM and the mother decided to return to the home to confront the father about what had occurred. A was left behind with another relative. Once the maternal quartet arrived at the family home, it is likely that there was a heated confrontation which escalated. I do not believe that the father shot at the brothers and missed. This seems highly implausible and I consider it to be an embellishment which the mother’s family has relied upon to justify the violence which followed. Nor do I believe that the brothers were brandishing a gun as alleged by the father.

The escalating row became physical. At some point, one or both of the brothers used a metal pole or poles to assault the father and break his legs (I am unable to determine whether the brothers came pre-armed with poles or whether they used one which happened to be lying around). I reject the father’s allegation that the mother and MGM were active participants in the assault. The mother’s alleged involvement is inconsistent with her having accompanied the father to the hospital; the medical notes do not corroborate the father’s allegation that they assaulted his genitals. Equally, the mother and MGM did not intervene to prevent the assault. The brothers were much younger and stronger than the father and their actions went far beyond what could possibly be justified as self-defence.

Although A was not present at the time of the assault, she was brought to the home at which it took place sometime afterwards and will have gained some awareness of what occurred. Her exposure to this serious violence, even if only indirectly, will have caused her significant emotional harm.

The mother’s account of what occurred on the night of 5/6 January 2024 involves a level of violence by the father which is extreme. I have borne in mind that it is inherently improbable that a person would act in such a way, especially in front of their own young child.

Having weighed up the evidence, however, I have been driven to the conclusion that the mother’s account is truthful and broadly accurate, notwithstanding the inherent improbability of the father having behaved in such a manner.

I accept the mother’s evidence that on this date A was removed from her care in extremely violent circumstances. The father brought two other men to the property to assist in him what was clearly a premeditated enterprise. In order to facilitate his abduction plan he drugged the mother, first with soup and then by forcibly injecting her with an unknown substance which rendered her into a state of semi-consciousness and paralysis. I also accept that, on the father’s instructions, the mother was tied up and carried to a roof where she was abandoned. The mother believed that she would die, understandably so and was saying prayers as a consequence. I am not able to make a finding about whether the father’s associates attempted to rape the mother, although I can well believe that they sexually assaulted her when they carried her bound up to the roof and deposited her.

The mother was eventually able to free herself and seek help.

I listened carefully to this aspect of the mother’s evidence and have no difficulty in finding that she was truthfully recalling a hugely traumatic experience.

It is likely that the father’s motive in tying up the mother was to prevent her from raising the alarm for as long as possible, but in leaving her abandoned on the roof in a drugged state he exposed her to a risk of death or serious harm.

The mother’s evidence about this event is, in my judgement, wholly corroborated by A’s disclosure to FC in January 2025. Although her account does not entirely match that of the mother (eg 8 men rather than 2), the core details she gave of the incident are the same. Since 6 January 2024, A has had no contact with her mother except once by telephone in April 2024 when she was monitored by the father and latterly since the Autumn of 2024 when all of her contact has been closely supervised and, save for very recently, has taken place on video. In my judgement, A could not have come up with what she said unless, as I find, it was something she personally witnessed. I accept the evidence of FC and the social workers to the effect that it would not have been possible for the mother or her family to instruct A into making such an allegation without this having been detected.

I do not accept that A having said that her mother thought she was dying should lead me to the conclusion that her account is the product of coaching. I find that this is a view A is likely to have formed from the prayers she heard her mother saying and, no doubt, her other desperate utterances as she was enduring this terrifying attack.

The mother also relies upon a recording she made in April 2024 when she made reference to this incident in a conversation with the father. I accept that the recording is genuine and that it provides some limited degree of corroboration for the mother’s case. I attach little weight to it, however, given its covert nature, the fact that the mother appears to be trying to lead the father into making admissions and the fact that the father appears to realise he is being recorded and essentially denies what is being suggested to him. The mother’s oral evidence and the evidence of what A herself has said are far more compelling.

I do not accept that the veracity of the mother’s account is undermined by her failure to go to hospital. There are a number of reasons why she may not have done so.

On my findings, the father caused A to be exposed to an exceptionally traumatic incident which is likely to have caused her severe and enduring psychological harm.

It follows that I have no hesitation in rejecting the father’s case that the removal was consensual. The fact that reports of the abduction were made to the police both in Pakistan and England in the aftermath of 6 January 2024 is inconsistent with that assertion, as is the father concealing A from her mother for a prolonged period of time. The purported consent documents which the father has produced are ones which, I find, he has falsified.

Only the father will know why he acted as he did. I consider it likely that he was enduringly resentful of the mother and her family as a result of the December 2020 assault and the mother’s decision to separate from him and that this dishonour he suffered may well have been a motivating factor.

Since abducting A from her mother’s care on 6 January 2024, I find that the father has actively and repeatedly sought to coach A into remembering a false narrative and into making false allegations against her mother. I base this finding on the following:

The father’s conduct has caused A further significant psychological harm which will have compounded the trauma of her abduction.

The findings I have made raise issues as to the mother’s ability to protect A which will require further consideration. Despite describing herself as an independent and strong person, in my judgement the mother is clearly very vulnerable. She was unable to escape from a relationship in which A was exposed to the serious domestic abuse which the father perpetrated against her. Even after the parties had ended their relationship she continued to bring A to see the father and to stay at his home despite everything he had done to her.

In December 2020, A was exposed to the aftermath of a very violent incident and she personally witnessed an incident in January 2024 which is likely to have enduring psychological consequences for her. She may well need specialist support to alleviate the impact of this and help her come to terms with what has happened.

A has also recently conveyed information to FC which raises a concern that she may have experienced sexual abuse at the home of a relative in Pakistan. This is matter which is likely to require further consideration.

I invite the parties to consider what directions may be needed to take the matter forward.

A number of cardinal principles relating to the process of fact-finding, which I have borne in mind throughout the hearing and in preparing my judgment, are well established. They include the following:

So far as the assessment of witnesses is concerned, in Re B-M (Children: Findings of Fact) [2021] EWCA Civ 1371 the Court of Appeal said the following at para 25:

“No judge would consider it proper to reach a conclusion about a witness's credibility based solely on the way that he or she gives evidence, at least in any normal circumstances. The ordinary process of reasoning will draw the judge to consider a number of other matters, such as the consistency of the account with known facts, with previous accounts given by the witness, with other evidence, and with the overall probabilities. However, in a case where the facts are not likely to be primarily found in contemporaneous documents the assessment of credibility can quite properly include the impression made upon the court by the witness, with due allowance being made for the pressures that may arise from the process of giving evidence. Indeed in family cases, where the question is not only 'what happened in the past?' but also 'what may happen in the future?', a witness's demeanour may offer important information to the court about what sort of a person the witness truly is, and consequently whether an account of past events or future intentions is likely to be reliable.”

In undertaking its evaluation, the court must have regard to all of the available evidence. Evidence cannot be evaluated and assessed in separate compartments. The court has to have regard to the relevance of each piece of evidence to other evidence and exercise an overview of the totality in order to come to a conclusion about whether the case put forward has been made out to the requisite standard (Re T (Abuse: Standard of Proof) [2004] EWCA Civ 558).

In a case where a court finds that one or more witnesses has lied it is important to bear in mind the guidance given in a criminal context in R v Lucas [1981] QB 720. The fact that a witness has lied about one matter does not mean that they have lied about other matters or that the court should reject the whole of their evidence. A witness may lie for a number of reasons, which include shame, humiliation, loyalty, panic, fear, distress, confusion and emotional pressure.

It is also important for the court to bear in mind the fallibility of human memory and the pressures of giving evidence. The need for caution when placing reliance upon the memory of witnesses was highlighted in Gestmin SGPS SA v Credit Suisse (UK) Ltd [2013] EWHC 3560 (Comm) by Leggat J (as he then was) at paras 15–21.

That does not mean, however, that the court is prevented from relying upon a witness’s memory alone as a basis for finding a disputed fact proved: see, for example, Barrow and Ors v Merrett and Anr [2022] EWCA Civ 1241, where the Court of Appeal held that the trial judge “was right to think that Gestmin, which was a commercial dispute, in which there was a significant ‘digital footprint’, did not require him to reject the evidence of the eye witnesses in a road traffic accident”. The relative significance of oral testimony and contemporaneous documentary evidence will vary from case to case. Ultimately, the court must assess all the evidence in a manner suited to the case before it, without inappropriately elevating one kind of evidence over another (Re A [2020] EWCA Civ 1230 at [para 41]).

In disputes as between two parents, the court must also be alive to the reality that the allegations are not being made by a neutral and expert local authority with nothing to gain, but by one parent seeking to gain an advantage in the battle against the other; that does not mean they are false, but it does increase the risk of misinterpretation, exaggeration, or downright fabrication (W (Children) [2010] UKSC 12 at [para 29]). In this case I am primarily concerned with proceedings brought by a local authority, but it is mainly based upon allegations which the parents make against each other.