Men who hit their wives should NOT be able to see their children

IT WAS in the early 1970s, as I was embarking on my career in journalism, that domestic violence began to be acknowledged as a regular occurrence in homes across the country. Two charities, Refuge and Women’s Aid, were founded, and I was determined that I would do anything I could to support their work. During the 33 years I presented Women’s Hour, I had numerous calls from women asking me for help. I was rarely able to do anything more than direct them to the right charity and offer them emotional support. There were so many shocking cases where women had been beaten, raped, controlled and denied any access to money to buy good food for their children. The children’s stories were agonising. They had witnessed the mothers they loved being beaten to a bloody pulp.

I would always advise the women to do everything they could to escape and take the traumatised children with them. It was often impossible due to the threats their partners made.

Sometimes I would hear that a woman had managed to escape and was getting legal help to go to the family courts to keep their children and find a way of beginning life safely without fear from the man who had ruined their lives.

I was always asked never to report the stories they told me. Anything that took place in a family court was to be kept a secret. I obeyed the law, but I will never forget the distress of women who were forced to obey the strict rules of the family courts that insisted, over and over again, that children must have access to both their parents.

The most distressing call I received came from a woman who had managed to go to court to detail the sexual violence and control she had suffered for years. Her children, ten and 12, had made it clear it was their choice to remain with their mother.

The court, though, was persuaded by the father that he had more money, a better house and could take better care of the kids. They were removed from their mother’s home and taken to live with him.

Thanks to years of lobbying, it has now been accepted that certain family courts should be opened to accredited journalists who will be able to report on decisions made in these courts as long as they keep the anonymity of the parties involved intact.

It’s a huge step forward, but not nearly as significant as the move made recently by the Conservative MP Kate Kniveton.

Kate became an MP when she took over the Staffordshire seat of her former husband, Andrew Griffiths, in 2019. Griffiths stepped down as a minister in 2018 after sending more than 2,000 text messages, many of a sexual nature, to two female constituents.

Kniveton filed for divorce, won the 2019 election and then revealed in the family court that she had been the victim of domestic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour and rape by Griffiths during her ten-year marriage.

The judge found her allegations to be true and she waived her right to anonymity with the intention of campaigning to improve matters in court for victims of domestic violence.

It was, though, only last week that Kate heard that her former husband had been blocked from seeing their child. Griffiths will only be allowed to contact the child through four letters a year, and an annual birthday and Christmas card.

This news came after years of legal wrangling over Griffiths’ access to the child which has cost Kate more than £120,000. The Children Act of 1989 states that it is generally in a child’s best interests to have a relationship with both parents, but Kate, like so many mothers I’ve spoken to in the past, disagrees, saying: ‘This belief in contact at all costs puts children and mothers at risk and can often have tragic consequences. It needs overturning.’

Griffiths had made a move for weekly supervised contact, leading to unsupervised contact with his child, in a hearing in January. He had previously seen the child once a week during a 30-minute video call. The judge said Griffiths wanted to ‘make amends’ and wanted to make sure the youngster ‘did not believe he was a monster’.

Kate stuck to her guns to protect her child and has no regrets about waiving her anonymity. If her case is, as her ex-husband claims, political, it’s a clear incidence of the personal being political. Her highprofile role as an MP, her fight for her child’s protection and speaking publicly about her experiences have given hope to many other women. She has had close to 50 or 60 women who have contacted her and others who have thanked her for speaking out.

Some 60 per cent of family court cases involving child contact orders involve allegations of domestic abuse. Dozens of children have been forced into contact with fathers accused of abuse. Children witness domestic violence. They know the harm their father has caused. They are damaged by what they have seen.

We must not have another generation of young people persuaded that such violence is not a problem by fathers keen to show they are not a monster.