Father’s rights violated

The “systemic failings” of the family justice system violated an “irreproachable” father’s human rights by denying him contact with his daughter over a decade, senior judges have ruled.
In a ground-breaking judgment the Court of Appeal judges said that they had never encountered a case in which the family justice system had “failed a family so completely”.
The man, 60, had endured a dozen years of legal battles against his mentally unstable ex-partner who was “implacably hostile” to any contact between him and their daughter.
His daughter now nearly 14, was aged 1 when her parents separated in 2001 and the legal marathon began, continuing “almost without interruption” for the next 12 years, appeal judges said. The litigation had “irredeemably marred” the girl’s childhood, they added, and denied her a proper relationship with her father.
Since 2006 the family courts had made 82 orders to try to break the impasse between the former couple.
The Court of Appeal ordered a rehearing of the father’s plea for direct contact. The judges also referred the case for investigation to Sir James Munby, the country’s most senior family judge.
Last year a senior family judge, finally banned the father from direct contact with his daughter, restricting him to sending e-mails, cards and presents at Christmas and on her birthday. However, he remarked that in 24 years as a judge he could not recall any case that had taken so long “or left me with such a feeling of failure on the part of the family justice system”. But now the Court of Appeal as ruled that both the father and the daughter’s human rights to respect for their family lives had been breached by “systemic failure” in the family justice system.
Collectively over time, the courts’ failure amounted to “an unjustified violation of the child’s and the father’s’ rights to respect for family life under the European Convention of Human Rights”. The cause of the failures was an over-worked and under-resourced system in which judges and child care professionals had no time to consider the basics.
The court heard that the father and the 48-year-old mother, had been together for about ten years before they separated when their daughter was a baby. Despite the mother’s the judge said protestations that she wanted father and daughter to see each other, said the “unimpeachable father had been consistently prevented from enjoying contact with his daughter by an implacably hostile mother”.
The father’s behaviour in court had been “dignified and measured despite the enormous frustration and anger that he must feel”, he said. His daughter clearly loved him; she had “thoroughly enjoyed” seeing him and such limited contact as had been allowed between them had gone well.
We fight for all our clients, but never more than for fathers in this situation. Contact Rodney Hylton-Potts on 020 7391 8111 or 24 hour email service [email protected] for immediate, sympathetic and expert advice