GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

Clearly, it should not be a luxury, there is important stuff to discuss. Previously

the majority of cases had at least one party represented and they were four

times more likely to have both parties represented. Within six months of these

cuts being introduce, the stats suggest that it was ten times more likely that

neither party would be represented. The result of this is that there has been a

massive, massive increase in litigants in person, meaning that parents can

cross-examine each other during child custody battles. On the surface this

may seem like both parties are on an equal footing. However, imagine the

position when the former relationship was an abusive one. In essence, the

abuser gets to re-abuse the victim on the stand in a public setting, resulting in

more victims not following through with proceedings. Clearly, this has got a

huge impact on the children that actually the courts are there to protect,

because they end up maybe not safe because they are going to stay with

parents that really are not fit to have them, but also they continue to abuse the

partners through their children.

To give an example of this, I once worked with a case where a victim had

suffered horrendous abuse over a number of years at the hands of the man

who professed to love her. He regularly beat her, verbally abused her and

raped her and, wait for it, “my honour, it was not acquired but conquered from

me, sir”. One such incident resulted in a pregnancy and twins being born, but

due to living in a really dysfunctional family environment, these kids were three

and they were still in babygrows and nappies and could not speak, so

obviously their development targets had not been met, so clearly the kids are in

a really, really dire situation. On top of that, they had witnessed their father

regularly beating their mother. He had a piece of two by four which he kept by

the bed and on occasions he would send her upstairs and say, “Go and get it”

and she would have to bring it down and he would sit there with it by his side

and just (demonstrated) when he felt like it. This is what this woman had had

to live with. He got a five year extended sentence, did this man, which was

great, but he continued to abuse her and he did it through the children. They

had a 12 year old child as well and following telephone contact etc. he regularly

called her a bitch, a slag, a whore and actually the other thing was, “Oh, dad’s

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