Children unhappy seeing father

Posted by: Soozles
03/07/08 at 2:38 pm

My ex and i split up 2 years ago and we have 8 year old twins, we have been through court and were assigned an officer from Cafcass. My kids told the cafcass officer how unhappy there are with their fathers behaviour (i left him as he was controlling, verbally, emotionally and physically abusive towards me) he is still being verbally and emotionally abusive towards the children and the cafcass officer addressed some of the kids feelings such as them being anxious in her report yet would not give a definate recommendation. In court on several occasions my ex had abusive outbursts towards myself and my solicitors and even towards the judge and the judge then had to call security to have him escorted out of the room, then for subsequent hearings security guards were outside the room at all times. I thought that this would show what type of person he is to all concerned especcially the judge and the cafcass officer (whom my ex threw out of  his house on his 1st home visit and told her to f*** off) yet at th3e final hearing the judge granted joint residency and the children have to go to him alternate weekends, every wednesday night and alternate mondays he then said that we swhould stop looking at what has happened in the past and we need to look forward to the future. My ex constantly harrasses and threatens me so i have involved the police, he drinks all the time, takes drugs (and his drugs convictions were brought up during the hearings) and has also had other convictions happened during these proceedings (criminal damage and for shooting a child with an air gun!) the police officer that i have been in contact with has contacted social services on my behalf and they won't get involved as it has been to court even though my kids have told the officer how their dad treats them. They are terrified of their father on the mornings of the days they have to have contact they beg not to go, cry and even threaten to run away bascially anything not to have to go.

We have a 6 month review coming up soon  and again i will go in telling the judge how it's been and how unhappy they are and i'm sure again it will all be ignored. The cafcass officer is no help at all she's just sits on the fence even though she has seen that he has an anger problem and told me that she would put a reccomendation in the report that he should attend some sort of anger management programme there was no mention of it in the report and then could not make the last hearing and sent a letter instead.

I just don't know what i can do i've tried everything that i can think of and it's not worked as the kids are too young to be heard, but i'm not sure they can take another 2 years of this until they are old enough to get their point across, they've already been refferred to a clinical pschologist by our gp as even he could see what affect this is having on them