L (Children) (Domestic Abuse: Stranding/Abandonment) (Continuing Risk of Emotional Harm)

In child-arrangements proceedings involving established domestic abuse, direct contact should be refused only where there is a clear risk of harm which cannot adequately be managed and which outweighs the benefits of contact. The court must apply the welfare checklist with specific regard to the domestic abuse, including its effect on the child and resident parent, the perpetrator’s likely behaviour, motivation and capacity for change, and the safety of contact. Supervision may manage physical or abduction risks but may not adequately protect children from continuing emotional harm caused by blame, denial and undermining behaviour. A child-contact intervention is ordinarily a means of implementing safe direct contact, not a substitute for addressing unresolved domestic-abuse risks.

The mother sought final welfare orders after she and three children returned to England following almost four years stranded in Country B. In an earlier fact-finding judgment, HHJ Rogers found that the father had subjected the mother to domestic abuse, controlled her and deliberately retained travel documents, leaving the mother and children in practical and legal limbo.

The father denied the findings, sought direct contact and applied for review of the fact-finding judgment. The mother and Children’s Guardian supported indirect written contact and recommended that the father undertake a domestic-abuse perpetrator programme before any progression to direct contact. The issues were whether the findings should be reopened, whether direct or indirect contact was safe and beneficial, and whether the father’s passport should be returned.

1. Review of findings. The application to reopen HHJ Rogers’s findings was dismissed. Stage 1 required solid grounds for believing that a rehearing might produce different findings. The court balanced finality, delay and child welfare against the possibility of relying on erroneous findings. The father’s evidence was either already considered, added nothing material, or could have been adduced at the original four-day fact-finding hearing. The threshold was not met.
2. Domestic abuse and contact. Under section 8 and section 1(3) of the Children Act 1989, welfare was paramount. The presumption of parental involvement did not require unsafe contact. The court applied PD12J, paras 35–40, and assessed the historical violence, coercive and controlling behaviour, stranding, emotional harm, the father’s denial and blame, the children’s needs, and the safety of the mother’s home.
3. Physical violence and abduction risks might have been managed through supervision, orders and a port alert. The more serious continuing risk arose from the father’s refusal to accept responsibility, his hostility towards the mother and the likelihood that he would impose a blaming narrative on the children. Supervision could not adequately prevent that emotional harm. The benefits of direct contact were therefore outweighed by the continuing risk.
4. A Child Contact Intervention was not an alternative to work addressing domestic-abuse risk. It could be considered after risk had been reduced and direct contact had been determined to be in the children’s best interests. The father’s application for direct contact was dismissed. Telephone and video contact were also not presently safe. The court left open indirect written contact, without promising a subsequent CCI referral.
5. The father’s passport was not returned. Although passport orders significantly interfere with personal liberty and require continuing review, retention remained justified while the children’s passports, found to be under the father’s control, had not been surrendered or shown to be unusable. The mother was permitted to obtain replacement passports without the father’s consent.

The judgment describes an earlier fact-finding judgment by HHJ Rogers dated 7 February 2020 and subsequent case-management hearings. The father had not appealed those findings.