A Father v A Mother

This is an anonymised version of the judgment given on 29 April 2026 in private in a fact-finding hearing on allegations between the parties. No report of these proceedings may identify the mother, father or child (“C”). Doing so may be contempt of court.

This case concerns C. I refer to his parents respectively as father and mother.

This case has a lengthy procedural history. I am not going to recite all of it. In summary the mother moved out of the family home with C on 10 September 2022. On 23 November 2022 she applied for a non-molestation order. On 8 February 2023 the father applied for a child arrangements order. There was going to be a fact-finding hearing in relation to the non-molestation order which was intended to inform the outcomes on the child arrangements order. However the father accepted a non-molestation order, with no admissions or findings, resulting in fact-finding not taking place. Cafcass prepared a section 7 for the Children Act proceedings which recommended no direct contact. A final hearing was to take place based on this. The father appealed against that approach on the basis that it was unfair for orders to be made premised on facts which had not been found. He won that appeal on 25 October 2024 and the fact-finding hearing was ordered. That was on 25 October 2024. The fact-finding hearing was originally listed to take place on 20 to 22 October 2025. It was adjourned because of Court unavailability and ultimately took place before me.

This hearing has taken place over three days in the Royal Courts of Justice. Throughout the mother has been represented by Ms Lampard of counsel. The father has not officially been legally represented. However he has had assistance from two people. Throughout the hearing he has had with him a professional McKenzie friend, Ms Raja. For the first two days of the hearing he also had the assistance of a court-appointed qualified legal representative named Ms McCauley-Stowe.

The father and mother have both been assisted by interpreters.

I am grateful to all the professionals for their assistance during this hearing.

The documents in the hearing are contained in a main bundle of 457 pages, a supplementary bundle of 384 pages and a 10 page child and family assessment from social services in Borough A. In addition I received position statements from both parties and written closing submissions from the father.

I heard oral evidence first from the father and then from the mother. Both were cross-examined extensively and I asked some questions. I then heard closing submissions from both parties.

The legal framework is uncontroversial. I will only give a brief summary. The burden sits on the person making an allegation to prove that it is more likely than not that the thing in question happened. When considering witness evidence I consider consistency within the testimony of witnesses, consistency of this with objective evidence, the level of detail the witnesses give and the plausibility of the account against the general backdrop of life and the specific situation in question. Memory is fallible. A judge must consider both the documentary evidence and the evidence of the witness in the round. Just because someone has lied about one thing does not mean they are lying about another.

There is a specific point which is worth commenting on in relation to the law on this case. Both parties are not native English speakers. I was told in oral evidence that the mother’s English has improved considerably since 2020 when the first incidents in which I am asked to make findings occurred. The father’s English is quite limited – he had to rely significantly on the interpreter, though clearly understood areas where the language was familiar. This creates a particular challenge because on the one hand I have the fallible recollections of the parties and on the other hand I have contemporaneous records in English created by third parties from the contemporaneous accounts of the parties. In particular I have the records from the police on 19 March 2020 and social services which begin shortly after this. However the accuracy of those records has been called into question during the hearing because of communication issues between the parties before me and the authors of these records. The overall effect of this is that the evidence is unusually imperfect.

The father makes five allegations and the mother makes five allegations. However three of the father’s allegations relate to the same incident as one of the mother’s allegations. This was on 19 March 2020. I therefore look at the allegations overall as follows:

This is the mother’s first allegation.

The father formally denies this. However he gives an account of the same incident to which I return when making my findings.

The father’s account is:

The mother’s account is:

This is the mothers fourth allegation. She says it was on 1 February 2022. She says:

The father formally says he denies this in the schedule of allegations, but he accepts that he set fire to a car. He denies that it placed the mother or C in any danger.

The subsequent allegations are said to be things that took place generally during the relationship rather than happening at specific times.

This is the father’s fourth allegation. He says:

This is the mothers third allegation. She says:

The father accepts that he used cannabis but denies doing so in front of C. He denies abusive behaviour generally.

Both parties identify verbal abuse as their fifth allegation. The father adds to this specific incident as follows:

The mother’s allegation is:

The mother completely denies the specific incident that the father describes. The father admits calling the mother a psychopath and describing her to the Cafcass officer as lazy. He denies using the other terms.

It is conventional in proceedings and the Family Court to comment on the impression that the witnesses gave.

The father made some effort to assist the court by giving his evidence but appeared at times to be evasive. In particular, to a number of questions he said he could not remember the answer, however it was brought to his attention he had in fact provided written evidence on these points. The father also came across as a poor historian in general. He was unable to explain when things happened, particularly in relation to his household with the mother and C. A notable example of this was about being unable to explain when he was on furlough.

However, there was a key element where the father was right about records being incorrect. At the outset of these proceedings in their original safeguarding letter, Cafcass had said that this family was not known to Borough A social services. The father proved during this hearing that this was incorrect, providing a child protection review dated 8 April 2021 from Borough A social services. The existing local authority disclosure, from Borough B, showed limited engagement by the father. However this report shows the father having engaged properly. Neither party appears to have realised that the court did not have disclosure from Borough A in order to see the full picture. The father was consequently genuinely confused by the absence of evidence

The mother gave her evidence sincerely. She did not appear to have tried to hide the involvement of Borough A social services. She did not avoid answering questions. However I note that the allegations she makes are of two types. First are three specific incidents, two in Italy and one in the UK. During the first two she was pregnant and it is agreed involved an argument. The heat of argument will affect recall for both parties. The third incident of the car fire is different, but also not disputed in terms of what the father did. The second types of allegations related to behaviour. These are verbal abuse and drug use. The impression given by the written evidence relied upon by the mother was that the father’s drug use and verbal abuse was continuous once her pregnancy began. During her oral evidence she explained that it fluctuated. In relation to drug use she mentioned that at the time of the child protection review by Borough A the father was not using cannabis. This is consistent with that report. She also said that after fights the father would apologise and he would act well. Sometimes there were good times and there were bad times.

It had struck me in the papers that there appeared to be a significant gap in the evidence about what had happened between 19 March 2020 and 1 February 2022. I found the mother honestly tried to assist with filling that gap.

In order to make findings it is important to place the allegations in the context of the overall relationship.

The father is a man from Italy. He moved to the UK as an adult. The mother is a woman from another country. She moved to the UK in 2018. She moved into a house share where the father already lived. Over time their relationship began and she moved into his room at some point in 2019.

In late 2019 the father decided to move back to Italy. The mother decided she would go too. Shortly after arrival in Italy they discovered that the mother was pregnant. They informed the family.

In January 2020, while the mother was in her room, the father had an argument. It is disputed whether he argued with his mother or his father - who I will refer to as the grandmother and grandfather. It does not matter which it was. He left the house with the grandmother’s car keys and went into the grandmother’s car. The mother spoke to the grandmother and was told where the father had gone. The mother followed him out and tried to speak to him in the car. It is unclear whether she climbed into the car and closed the door or tried to get into the car. Either way I find that the father asked her to leave him alone and said to her something along the lines of “you have ruined my life bitch”. The mother did not leave. She was shocked by this comment, understandably given that she was now pregnant with his child and she had come to Italy where she was staying with his family. I find the father pushed her face, causing an injury through her glasses next to the bridge of her nose. I find he pushed her out of the car and she fell to the kerb. He drove off. It is important to note that the car was not moving when he pushed her, as there is reference in one place to being pushed out of a moving vehicle but elsewhere to a stationary vehicle. The grandmother assisted the mother and suggested she should leave the father and go back to her family to have the baby.

The mother did not heed this advice. The father apologised to the mother and they decided to make a go of the relationship. It should be noted that this was not without consideration of other options. It came out in the evidence and is supported in the written evidence that they considered the possibility of termination. It is unclear whether this was before or after the car fight.

By the mother’s birthday in February 2020 they had moved back to the UK and into the same house they had been in before. It was not long before coronavirus was taking over the world. However before the full lockdown the second incident occurred.

I am going to begin with what the police recorded at the time:

One more thing from this record is that the father described the mother as trying to control him.

It is also worth quoting the referral made at the hospital, presumably only based on the mother’s account:

The accounts given now have significant additional elements. The father suggests that he was trying to give the masks to the mother out of concern. He says she tripped over a cable but also that he grabbed her or stepped away – he is inconsistent about which. He says also that she physically attacked him. The mother says she picked up the knife for protection. She continues to deny threatening self-harm.

Taking account of everything I find that in the house share the father flirted with one of the female housemates. She provided facemasks to the father. On the morning of 19 March 2020 the father was getting ready to go to work and went to pick up the facemasks. Knowing their source the mother reacted angrily. She threw them out the window. There ensued a fight with the mother shouting at the father. That fight became physical when the father grabbed her. The mother fell to the ground. That was the end of the physical confrontation. The mother claims now that the father then kicked her in the stomach. I cannot believe that a serious assault on a pregnant woman in this way would not end up in the police or social services record even bearing in mind the language difficulties. It is also notable that there is no evidence of injuries other than the mother’s pain. I also do not accept that the mother physically attacked the father because of the absence of a contemporaneous record of this.

Once the mother got up from the floor she picked up a knife. It is unclear whether this was immediately after or slightly later. Either way it appears clear that the father had decided to continue to get ready to go to work. The mother says she picked up the knife to protect herself. The father says now that he was threatened with a knife. The contemporaneous evidence supports neither account. It says that she picked up the knife to stop the father leaving and that he was not threatened. I find the mother was still angry and felt uncared for by the father and angry at his perceived infidelity. She wanted him to care. He responded by calling the police who attended within 10 minutes. The mother did not object to the police being called. They both went outside. The mother says they went outside to wait for the police. The father says he was followed by the mother still holding the knife. It is clear she brought the knife outside but the father was not threatened. When the police arrived the mother had put the knife down. She showed them where it was when asked. The father was found in possession of cannabis and arrested for this and assault. The mother did not give a statement and he was not charged. As already mentioned the mother was taken to hospital as a precaution.

In relation to the knife I prefer the contemporaneous evidence over that given by the witnesses. This is that the mother picked up the knife to stop the father leaving and he left anyway. Given he was not in fact feeling threatened his decision to call the police may have been incriminating for her but it was not an inherently unreasonable thing to do. Indeed it resulted in the intervention by social services that ultimately assisted the mother, albeit after a very long time.

Before I turn to the next allegation I need to continue the narrative of the couple. They continued to live in the house share now with involvement of Borough B social services. Borough B social services observed that there was evidence of smoking and cannabis use in the house and it was not a suitable place to bring up a baby. The father did not engage well with social services and at one point smoked cannabis in front of the social worker. It is also probable that the father was on furlough during this period given his work as a chef and the timing of the pandemic. His memory of the period may be addled by his drug use. The mother described this period to her DV support worker as alternating between honeymoon and nightmare.

The mother and father moved to a different part of London in July 2020. Shortly after, C was born. In collaboration with social services it was agreed that he could go to his parents at their home. Subsequently the case was transferred to Borough A social services. The only evidence I have from Borough A social services is the child protection review dated 8 April 2021. It shows that the author had undertaken “visits” and the mother and father had engaged with therapeutic support provided by her team manager. The child protection review also refers to the social situation of the mother including her being isolated by not having family in the country or friends in the area. It is relevant to note that the report refers to the mother attending mother and baby groups but hoping these would return to being face-to-face in the future. It is unclear whether social services undertook the visits in person or remotely.

I pause to note that having a baby in August 2020 would be incredibly isolating for any parent because they could not participate in the normal new parent activities and interactions with family. This situation would be compounded by two factors for the mother. First, she had lived in the UK for a fairly short time and moved to a different area in London shortly before the birth. Second, her home country is a country where coronavirus ran rife and travel was severely restricted. I note that I asked her about the friends she had before having a baby and she said she did have some friends who she had remained friends with. Her evidence was that the father restricted her contact with these people. However it is relevant to note that the situation in the country at this time also will have restricted her contact.

The child protection review records no concerns about domestic violence or substance misuse.

In October 2021 the family moved together to Borough B. Borough B social services did not become engaged with the family at this stage.

I turn now to the car fire. In the evening of 2 February 2022 the father set fire to the car belonging to a person against whom he had a grudge. That car was parked outside his parent’s property. Inside the property were the mother and C. The father describes the fire as 100 m away from the property. The photographic evidence shows that is clearly not the case. It was right on the perimeter of the property. I can see in the photograph at B60 that the driveway is approximately 3 car lengths long. So the fire was about 15 m from the door of the property.

The mother was understandably scared by a fire close to her and her son and it seems undisputed that the father had been drinking before he did this. Alcohol disinhibits people. They tend to do stupid things. Arson is a stupid thing to do. It is dangerous. On top of this the mother says she was concerned about retaliation by the owner of the car. That appears to be a valid concern.

The mother says that it was at this point she decided that she had to end the relationship with the father. However she did not communicate that directly to the father. Instead they returned to the UK at the end of their holiday together and continued to live together.

On 12 July 2022 the mother contacted Borough B social services. It is helpful to read the referral in full. It appears at D325 of the bundle:

I will deal briefly with one point in this extract. The reference to two physical attacks when the mother was pregnant is consistent with the allegations I have been asked to determine. There is no allegation of a physical attack six months before July 2022. I do not know what this refers to and make no finding on it.

Following this contact the mother was assisted to leave the father and move to her own accommodation with C. That happened on or shortly before 10 September 2022. Around this time there was a family assessment. The mother did not give consent for the father to be involved in this and the local authority agreed to such an approach in order to safeguard her. There is no sign that the father was involved with social services after the mother had moved out of the family home. The case was closed in September 2022.

In this context I turn to the allegation of drug use and verbal abuse.

The father admits using cannabis while he lived in the family home. He denies doing so in front of C. The mother’s allegation is actually very limited. It is that the father would prepare cannabis in the presence of their son and smoked one joint while dropping him off at nursery. The mother gave credible evidence about the specific incident where she saw the father preparing a joint saying he would smoke it later and then took C to nursery where she saw him from the window smoking. I believe her evidence. However when I look at the contemporaneous records I do not see any other allegations of him using, rather than preparing, drugs in front of C.

The mother does not use drugs or drink alcohol. It is clear to me that she disapproved of this behaviour by the father. However if she expressed her disapproval he would shout in response. Fundamentally, the mother thought that she could change the father. When she met him, he smoked cannabis and he drank alcohol. He continued to do so throughout their relationship, albeit with cannabis use being intermittent.

The father describes the relationship as having been toxic. I accept that this is what he thought of it. He did not want to live in the way that the mother thought he should. This was a source of ongoing conflict and ultimately led to the sensible decision of the mother to end the relationship.

With this in mind I turn to the final point about verbal abuse. The mother’s allegation is straightforward. It is that the father emotionally and verbally abused her repeatedly calling her by derogatory names such as psychopath, lazy, dirty, bad mother and bitch. The father’s allegation involves a specific point about the mother saying vaffanculo during a call between the father, grandmother and father’s sister, and a more general allegation that these incidents caused tension with his family and alienated him from his loved ones.

It is probable that the parties had frequent arguments during their cohabitation. It is probable that derogatory names were used during this. That is the implication of both of their evidence. It seems unlikely such arguments would not involve criticism of each other and some swearing.

However the mother’s wish for the father not to use cannabis or have cannabis in the home was entirely reasonable. It is entirely reasonable to expect the father of a child not to use illegal drugs. Indeed it is reasonable to expect anybody not to use illegal drugs. The father has shown little insight into the fact that he was wrong in thinking that her expectation was unreasonable.

Dealing specifically with the allegation about the mother swearing at the grandmother, I am conscious there is a statement purportedly from the grandmother however I give this little weight because of its origins are unclear and the father was unable to explain its source clearly. The specific incident has not been given any specific time. But the most important point is that I do not accept the consequence of this being alienation between the father and his own family. There is no evidence of such alienation. Indeed the presence of the statement from the grandmother suggests that if it were genuine, such alienation has not taken place.

Turning to the mother’s allegation, she has been consistent that there were arguments during which she was sworn at and referred to a psychopath, lazy, dirty, bad mother and bitch. The father admits using the term psychopath. I note this is how he perceived her desire to change his behaviour. He admits saying lazy to Cafcass. That leaves three words - dirty, bad mother and bitch - disputed. I am conscious that the parties communicate with each other in Italian and I do not know what words were used in Italian. I find it probable that during arguments words like these in Italian were used.

Finally I must deal with the father’s allegation that the mother destroyed his personal property. I can deal with this simply. The father has failed to provide any corroborative evidence of this. He has claimed that he has a broken phone but has failed to produce this evidence. He has failed to identify in detail when the mother is alleged to have shredded his clothes or broken his phone. This might have happened but the father has failed to satisfy me on the balance of probabilities that it did happen.

Having found facts I now return to the allegations to summarise my findings and also consider the issue of there being a coercive and controlling behaviour.

Beginning with the father’s allegations I find:

Turning to the mother’s allegations

I am asked to find that there was an overarching pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in this relationship looking at the wider evidential context in line with F v M [2021] EWFC 4. At paragraph 4 this explains, as subsequently endorsed by the Court of Appeal in Re H-N and Others (children) (domestic abuse: finding of fact hearings) [2021] EWCA Civ 448

Coercive and controlling behaviour is a serious allegation. I do not find there to have been a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in this case. The father’s behaviour was not intended to control the mother it was intended to free him from her reasonable expectations of him as a partner and parent. I accept her evidence that she was isolated but in the context of the coronavirus pandemic I do not see that as having been primarily caused by the father. I accept evidence about not having been permitted to go to her home country, but I have not heard evidence about why that decision was made. I note that the father gave written evidence on this at paragraph 6 of his statement dated 27 January 2023. That has never been challenged. Furthermore, there is no evidence of financial control within the allegations. The only real suggestion of controlling behaviour was the mother saying that she was not permitted to go out with friends and being belittled when she dressed up. But viewed in the context of the father working long hours - it is described in the social services evidence his taking double shifts and taking no responsibility for childcare - it seems improbable that he would have any way to exercise real control over the behaviour of the mother. I therefore do not find a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour.

I find a pattern of domestic verbal abuse within a toxic relationship founded on fundamental incompatibility between the mother and father of C.

Finally it is necessary to note for completeness that during these proceedings the father completed hair strand testing where he was negative for cannabis and not shown to drink excessively. Although his evidence about when he stopped using cannabis has been inconsistent, I have not been asked to make findings that he made further use of cannabis after that hair strand testing and I do not.