MAR 97 Parents separate. Limited contact permitted by mother. CHILDREN: T is 9;
M is 8.

AUG 97 Father introduces new partner, Christine. After that, mother blocks contact.

DEC/JAN 97 Boxing Day to New Year – staying contact permitted with Christine involved. Forest of Arden extremely happy time is spent with the children over the holiday. After that, contact is blocked by mother.

JAN 98 First contact hearing. Mother comes to court to argue that father was too depressed to be allowed contact. Outside court before hearing: solicitors agree weekend staying contact to resume immediately. However, parents told they must see the Duty Welfare Officer who pronounces both parents depressed. Although she has never met the parties before, and has never seen the children, she vetoes the staying contact agreed between the parents. An order is made by DJ Enzer for nugatory weekend visiting contact in line with the Duty Officer’s recommendation. Welfare report ordered. Father is devastated. A powerful,early message is sent to mother that the family justice system will help her block contact. She tells the children that it is the Welfare Service who say they cannot have contact with their father.

FEB/MAR 98 Parents attempt reconciliation. Father is motivated by desire not to lose his children. During the attempted reconciliation, mother admits to father that she had been blocking contact deliberately. Reconciliation fails after 5 weeks. There after all contact (including phone contact) is denied by mother. Welfare report process re-activated.

MAY 98 Mark Verity (a Surrey Welfare Officer) “observes contact” after long period of no contact. Children immediately express a strong desire to restart contact. T says she also wants phone contact to be restored immediately and says she will ask her mother to release their phone number to father that day. Mother refuses and Verity will do nothing to assist father or children. He says his role is solely to write a report for court.

Some crumbs of visiting contact are permitted by mother whilst Verity is still in the picture. As soon as children want to progress to more contact, contact is blocked by mother. M then started to refuse contact and T followed suit a few weeks’ later. This is a classic symptom of parental alienation. Father is unable to interest Verity in playing any meaningful role in setting up reasonable contact arrangements. Verity admits to having zero knowledge of parental alienation, phenomenon well known to mental & health professionals who operate in the realm of custody and access disputes. Verity is only interested in writing reports for court. By the time he filed his report recommending contact, all contact had been stopped.

Complaints to the Welfare Service all fall on deaf ears. Nobody is even prepared to meet with, father to discuss them. Patricia Stowe (Verity’s boss) will do nothing. The Chief Probation Officer for Surrey, Michael Varah, refuses to investigate or even to abide by his organization’s complaints procedure. He says it would all be a waste of taxpayers’ money.

SEP 98 Given the Welfare Service’s lack of support and zero understanding of parental alienation, father decides to withdraw from the contact litigation to see if contact would be restored in the absence of litigation. There was a long period of zero contact during which father wrote to the girls and sent them cards and gifts.

                DURING THE ZERO CONTACT PERIOD FROM JUNE 98 TO AUGUST 99  

Father hears nothing whatever from his children or their mother. Both girls’ schools are reluctant to communicate with father or to treat him as an equal parent. The doctor refuses to keep him informed about his daughters’ medical condition. Father educates T’s school as to the legal position and corrects misinformation that had been provided to the school by the mother. The school thereafter completely change their attitude. Indeed, T’s school engineers a breakthrough.

They invite father to a parents’ event at which T is to be presented with an award. When she enters the hall father is shocked by the fact that she had grown so much that he did not, at first, recognize his own daughter. She sits and plays the award-winning piano piece that she had herself composed. Father (who used to play piano while his daughters sang along when he was able to live with them) did not even know that T played the piano!. But this breakthrough marks the beginning of a process whereby T ultimately becomes able to assert her need for contact with her father in the teeth of a climate at home that is hostile to father. However T still needs external help in order that she could have contact with her father.

MAY 99 Father marries Christine.

JUN 99 Still no sign of contact being permitted, so father issues fresh contact proceedings after mother again refuses to negotiate reasonable contact arrangements.

AUG 99 First hearing. Verity is the Duty Officer at court. He withdraws from the case saying it needs someone different. Faced with new court proceedings, mother permits some token contact. Mother then purports to agree a parenting plan in a joint meeting with a new Surrey Welfare Officer, Roma Nelson, who records and endorses the agreement in a report for court. After the meeting mother refuses to honour the agreement. The Welfare Service take no interest and, inexplicably, remove Nelson from the case.

JAN 00 Another Surrey Welfare Officer (Geraldine Wilson) takes over. She adopts a militant approach towards father from the outset. She has clearly been selected as someone capable of "putting this father in his place"!. There is a veneer of reasonableness at first. She agrees to see father with his children but later refuses to do so. She also refuses to meet father’s wife, Christine, the children’s stepmother, after saying she would do so. When she writes her report it is inaccurate – even as to basic facts, such as the amount of contact that is taking place.

Wilson refuses to do anything to support contact. She refuses to support father’s court application that a mental health professional should be appointed to facilitate contact – one qualified to advise the court on parental alienation. Wilson’s report recommends that no contact order be made. Again nobody from CAFCASS will meet with father to discuss his complaints. Wilson ignores father’s communications.

MAY 00 TRIAL: Under cross-examination Wilson accepts that, if the children were subject to alienating influences, her recommendations to the court would be the precise opposite of what would serve the children’s best interests. The judge (HHJ Morgan) takes up father’s key allegation that contact is withdrawn repeatedly after good contact has taken place. He, concludes on balance that the mother is probably trying her best, but makes clear that he expects normal contact arrangements (in line with father’s modest application for alternate weekend contact and half the school holidays) to come about soon and he admonishes mother accordingly. He is unaware that mother lied to him on a crucial matter that went to the heart of father’s allegation that she was undermining contact. (Proof of this lie comes about during, discovery as a result of subsequent litigation.) The judge makes a contact order (albeit a paltry one) to both children in spite of Wilson’s recommendation that there should be no order.

AUG 00 Father and Christine take the children on a very successful and happy 2-week holiday to Florida. After that, father does not see M again for several years. Contact is blocked. Mother confiscates from T the mobile phone father provided to her to facilitate contact. Mother refuses to respond to father’s requests for contact. Father again petitions the court for assistance.

DEC 00 HHJ Morgan makes a more robust contact order to secure T’s contact. It states that mother must not confiscate T’s mobile phone further she must respond to father’s reasonable requests for contact.

               CAFCASS ENTERS THE PICTURE – THEIR CONDUCT BEGGARS BELIEF!

FEB 01 Matters do not improve so father makes a further court application. HHJ Morgan; agrees with father that the matter should be transferred to the High Court, that the Official Solicitor (by now subsumed by CAFCASS LEGAL) should take the case and Guardians Ad Litem appointed for the children. (The President of the Family Division will later in the Court of Appeal express full support for this ruling by the first instance judge.)

MAR 01 CAFCASS LEGAL in a letter signed on behalf of its Legal Director, Charles Prest, refuse the judge’s invitation, stating that the matter is best left with Welfare Officers (by now called Family Court Reporters).

IT WILL LATER BE SEEN THAT CHARLES PREST MAKES CERTAIN THAT CAFCASS WILL NEVER ACT ON THE FIRST INSTANCE JUDGE’S RULING – NOT EVEN WHEN THEY ARE TOLD TO DO SO BY THE COURT OF APPEAL & THE PRESIDENT OF THE FAMILY DIVISION HERSELF.

JUNE 01 Mother tells the High Court (DJ Maple) that CAFCASS LEGAL have told her that father is a “vexatious litigant” and there is nothing they can do to stop him petitioning the High Court.

JULY 01 A further Welfare Officer (Aviva Morris) with no previous knowledge of the case requires the children to be brought to the High Court by their mother to be interviewed immediately prior to a hearing. (T later complains that Morris was only interested in fishing for negative comments about her father.) This officer declines to meet with father. She then reports orally to the deputy High Court judge (HHJ Goldstein). Her mission was clearly to close down father’s contact application.

(The President of the Family Division later “deprecates” CAFCASS’s methodology in her leading Judgment in the Court of Appeal on 20 February 2002.)

HHJ Goldstein delivers his Judgment dismissing father’s case on the strength of Morris’s oral report. Without notice or warning, Goldstein makes an order banning father from making any further application regarding contact to his children for 3 years – effectively the rest of their childhood but, of his own volition, the judge gives father permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal. Father appeals (in person) and wins. The appeal is reported in Family Law Journal.

20 FEB 02 Court of Appeal’s ruling and leading Judgment delivered by the President overturns Goldstein. She describes what he did as “outrageous”. The Court of Appeal’s Judgment expresses an intention that there should be a profound investigation and comprehensive assistance for the family – the parents AND the children. T is now 14; M is 13.

2 MAR 02 President directs “for the avoidance of doubt” that the contact application dated 12 February 2001 is still to be dealt with and writes to that effect to Mike Hinchcliffe (Charles Prest’s Deputy in CAFCASS LEGAL) that same day. This was to correct one of several fundamental errors in the President’s Judgment which father had to point out to her.

14 MAR 02 Father’s email to Mike Hinchcliffe referring to President’s direction on 2 March 02.

24 APR 02 CAFCASS grudgingly accept Court of Appeal’s invitation to act (having taken an internal decision to refuse) as a result (it is claimed) of a phone call from the President to Charles Prest.

1 MAY 02 Father’s email to CAFCASS (John Ramus CAFCASS Guardian/caseworker) stressing the importance of CAFCASS attending the children hearing on 3 May and again referring to the President’s direction that there was a live contact application to be dealt with. Father is overseas on business. It is immediately plain that Ramus intends to do nothing effective.

3 MAY 02 CAFCASS attend Court and, through Counsel (Heather MacGregor) mislead Mr Justice Johnson (the High Court Judge) into believing that there is no outstanding contact application. They knew this to be false and their Counsel had a copy of father’s comprehensive letter to the Judge which yet again referred to the President’s direction. Accordingly Johnson J dismisses contact in father’s absence. (The President later in the Court of Appeal makes clear that she is dumbfounded that Mr Justice Johnson ignored her express intentions.) Father sends a Litigation Friend (Duffield) to court in his absence. CAFCASS’s team laugh and joke with mother and her lawyers, but refuse to enter into a dialogue with father’s representative while they conspire with mother’s side to have contact dismissed. CAFCASS’s counsel refuses to talk to father on the phone when Duffield offers her the phone. The consequences of CAFCASS’s gross negligence on this day are disastrous.

8 MAY 02 Father complains to CAFCASS (David Mott) concerning the conduct of this first hearing.

23 MAY 02 David Mott refuses to enter into correspondence with father.

28 MAY 02 Father’s email appealing to CAFCASS Legal Director (Charles Prest)

14 JUNE 02 Prest’s distasteful reply refusing to get involved and effectively says, “Forget your children – it’s all a waste of taxpayers’ money!”

20 JUNE 02 Father’s email to Prest again appealing for his intervention.

25 JUNE 02 Email from Prest refusing to do anything about father’s complaint.

24 AUG 02 CAFCASS Counsel’s negligent Opinion wrongly stating that (a) there was no outstanding contact application and (b) there never had been one. CAFCASS knew this advice to be both plainly wrong and negligent. The President’s Judgment on 20 February 2001 had emphasized that CAFCASS LEGAL must read all the papers immediately. They never bother to read them.

NOV 02 CAFCASS tries to repeat the very methodology that the President “deprecated” in her Judgment. Father appeals direct to the President who intervenes causing Prest to take some action. However, beyond writing a letter of apology, he takes no action to put the handling of this case on a proper footing.

25 NOV 02 Lord Justice Thorpe’s Judgment in Court of Appeal confirming that President’s Judgment on 20 February 2002 had intended a profound investigation and comprehensive help for family. Thorpe sends an expedited transcript of his Judgment to Mr Justice Johnson who ignores it.

29 NOV 02 CAFCASS, having done nothing to act on the President’s Judgment of 20 February 2002, now attend court and have contact dismissed again without having prepared any report and without any prior notice to father of their position nor had any court application been made to dismiss contact. CAFCASS’s Guardian/caseworker, John Ramus, had not seen either parent nor even the children. Mr Justice Johnson dismisses contact again, refuses to allow father to cross-examine John Ramus, and merely tells father to “sue CAFCASS”.

17 JUNE 03 Court of Appeal allow father’s appeal a second time. President expresses her disappointment that CAFCASS have done nothing since her first Judgment. She makes clear that she expects CAFCASS to act when she calls upon them to act. CAFCASS (David Mott) lie to the President through Counsel Heather MacGregor) claiming that they had heard “absolutely nothing” since the first Court of Appeal’s Judgment of 20 February 2002. CAFCASS through Counsel accept that they should have moved the case forward at the first hearing on 3 May 2003.

T is now 15; M is 14.  Father rarely sees them.  IT IS NOW ALL TOO LATE!

1 AUG 03 Former Chairman of CAFCASS, Anthony Hewson,OBE at the instigation of EQUAL PARENTING COUNCIL, agrees that CAFCASS must investigate the father’s complaint.

22 APR 04 After relentless chasing by father, an investigator is instructed by CAFCASS (an external solicitor GEORGE MARRIOTT) to interview father. The interview takes place on 22 April 2004. Marriott has not even been given the complaint documents by CAFCASS.

27 APR 04 Having learnt of Mr Hewson’s resignation, father briefs the new CAFCASS Chair, Baroness Jill Pitkeathley OBE. Particular reference is made to Charles Prest’s gross misconduct. She replies stating that she did not want to comment further until the matter had come before the CAFCASS Board. (She has not commented since.)

15 JUL 04 CAFCASS’s then Chief Executive, Jonathan Tross, writes to father enclosing Marriott’s report dated 30 June 04. The report partially upheld the complaint in a token way, but it was clear that the investigator had been grossly negligent and biased in favour of his paymasters CAFCASS). His report is a whitewash and will later be discredited by the CAFCASS Board’s Appeal Panel.

27 JUL 04 Father appeals to the CAFCASS Board by way of a letter that mounts a comprehensive, copiously documented attack on Marriott’s methodology, report and conclusions. Father’s appeal is subsequently upheld by the CAFCASS Board, but no remedy is proposed.

10 SEPT 04 Father writes to CAFCASS’s new Chief Executive, Anthony Douglas, asking how CAFCASS intends to resolve the issues arising out of the successful appeal. In response, Mr Douglas seeks a meeting with father. This will be the first meeting that anyone from CAFCASS has ever had with any member of the family since the Court of Appeal’s judgment on 20 February 2002.

17 SEPT 04 Mr Douglas meets with father and undertakes to write back to father covering all issues and with proposals for resolution by latest the end of October 04. Mr Douglas adds that he is acutely aware of the importance of this matter, especially in view of the fact that Mr Prest (and other CAFCASS staff implicated in father’s complaint) are “still in their posts”. (Mr Douglas makes clear that he is aware that father has repeatedly accused the CAFCASS Board of spinelessness in failing to sanction those responsible for CAFCASS’s abject failures in this case – failures that have patently worked to the detriment of the children’s welfare.)

14 NOV 04 In spite of reminders, the promised letter has not been received from Mr Douglas.

T is now 17; M is 15 – THEIR CHILDHOOD IS OVER!

EPC stands behind everything in this time line and possess a full set of documents to substantiate every point. Consider the following……