[2025] EWHC 2961 (Fam)

I have set out the bare facts relating to this troubling incident earlier in my judgment. I listened to the recording, which lasts 10.17 minutes, made again by the father at the time.

The audio recording of this incident on 18/6/25 makes for very uncomfortable listening. The mother accepts that she was holding a knife and was asking the father to kill her repeatedly. She was plainly highly distressed. The father appeared to remain remarkably calm in the circumstances for most of the time. They make cross allegations during the incident. The father alleges that the mother made a number of other threats, including threats to destroy him. The child is present for a short part of the incident following father shouting “ get off me”. Mother said unhelpfully to her that “he shouted” meaning father.

I accept that this incident must have been a very challenging and frightening experience for the father. However, I also digress to record that the context to this incident is significant. The mother had recently arrived in England. She had recently been told, which was not challenged, that her own father had recently received a terminal cancer diagnosis. She refers to this diagnosis during the exchange. Her request to be able to return to Japan with the child earlier than the revised date in September, to enable the child to see her father, had been rebuffed from her perspective. She had also, unexpectedly, received a formal letter from the father’s solicitors who were already in possession of the child’s passports. She was effectively alone and very vulnerable.

Whilst mother’s actions, on her own case, were deeply troubling, in my judgment they must still be set in the particular, and no doubt bewildering, context of her being in a country that was not her home.