After the first court appearance, a Section 7, Cafcass, social workers - would I have to flee the country?

When I look back at this time, it is blurry, hazy, and hard to recall with the clarity I had in the first few days. I was in shock. Unbeknown to me, shock isn’t a transient thing; it can last weeks and months, and I think this is why the first six to eight months were such a blur. I wasn’t even drinking much at that point, surviving on about four hours’ sleep a night, as Lola was in bed next to me, drawing pictures to go into her ‘book’ of what happened.

But after the first family court appearance, I had a timetable ahead of me. The Section 7 would be compiled by the social worker (I didn’t know who, as we had a revolving door of them). We would then reconvene and sit in front of a District Judge (the DJ). Apparently, a “good” outcome would be a Fact Finding hearing, although in my mind I didn’t really understand what could be good about a mini-trial. In my naïveté and shocked state of mind, I still couldn’t grasp why it was so convoluted when it was so clear what he had done.

But a parent’s rights are a parent’s rights—and seemingly above the law.

What followed was a total of three social workers and a handful of three or four thirty-minute “meetings” with the girls to assess if they had been abused, with a scheduled contact centre meeting so the social worker could observe my daughters with their father to enable them to make an informed decision.

There was a delay to the meetings, as the one nice social worker left - unsurprisingly - after only three weeks in our case. Possibly one of the worst experiences of my life was meeting the most despicable social worker at my daughter’s school. You could tell she despised me on sight. I met her in the school reception before the end of the school day. She told me she would meet my daughters on the school premises after all the children had gone home, but she had to come with me to collect them so I couldn’t groom them on what to say (this was a real concern for the police and social workers, and I often remember the protocols before interviews to make sure I couldn’t feed them the apparent lies).

I asked her what people would say in the playground. It was a small primary school, so I knew many parents, and she said people would think she was a family friend - I was a bit WTAF. But tbh, it was clear there was something major going on with my dramatic weight loss and move from COS to Tesco clothes (which looked OK as I’d dropped two stone with the stress). After twenty minutes with the girls, she said that they hadn’t been abused. She said I was the one abusing the children by making them tell lies and that if she was writing the Section 7, she would categorically state that.

I went home and knocked back some whisky. At this point, I was still cautiously managing one whisky and two medium reds before bed—enough to get my four hours’ sleep.

The following day, I received a call from the social worker’s superior, asking me to attend a meeting with her later that day. I took a friend - a friend who worked in safeguarding. I was told that if I continued to force the girls to draw pictures to incriminate their father, they would take action against me and the Section 7 would be turned. It was sickening, and in my Netflix drama, it would be the moment that Kate Winslet or Reese Witherspoon would be seen running in the rain on a deserted beach - yet I was in a 1950s council block. She was evil; she looked nasty, she spat out the words, and as before, I felt that the social workers had it in for me. Had it in for me because I challenged them, wouldn’t bend to their words, used my friends in high places to help me advocate. And I knew I was lucky that I could do this, because in other circumstances, when people aren’t as fortunate, this is how children fall through the cracks. This is how we see those headlines and wonder how social care let a child die because they didn’t believe the victim or bother to look for abuse.

As the court date approached, they still hadn’t scheduled the contact session and observation which was to form a large part of the report. I was chasing, and it finally was scheduled ten days before the court date. As an aside, this was the last time Lola saw her father - apart from sightings around town - as he still lives a mile from our house.

I used to sit outside the contact centre, in the depressing car park adjacent to a soft play, needing to be close at hand should they need me or want to end the session early, and I did the same on that occasion. Although I was still in shock, I still felt revulsion at the thought of him close to them, hugging them, playing with them in his affected tone. Contact centres manage handovers well, but the one we went to was small, and I still got sight of him as I went forward to grab them into an embrace. They were hyper, confused at the process they were in, but I was hopeful the social worker would see the hyper behaviour as a signal. I asked the social worker if she would see the girls the next day to talk to them about the contact session—but she replied there was no time. It seemed incredible that this wouldn’t be mandatory - that surely the most important thing would be to talk to them both following the session, to note the fallout if there was one (which of course there was). She informed me I would receive the report two days before court, as detailed in the court order (you will see that court orders will stipulate when certain documents have to be submitted).

In the shock haze, I do remember my solicitor emailing me the Section 7- it was two days before court. It was the only time I heard her bewildered, without a plan, as she recounted to me that the Section 7 stated the girls had not been abused, and their father should have unfettered access and resume his full parental responsibilities. I remember I was walking, chain-smoking as I often was, numb.

But unbeknown to me, an angel was above, as the court date got rescheduled—more common than is kind.

There’s nothing worse than being psyched and ready and the date changing twenty-four hours before (which happened three times to me). But THANK FUCK for the date change.

My barrister couldn’t make it, so my lovely solicitor sent me a list of available barristers from the chambers. I chose “Luca,” tbh partly because he was the most handsome (I did seem to review largely as I would on Hinge) and had good creds. And from our first meeting, I realised how much rests on having the right counsel.

He cared, he was excellent at his job, he had children, and was down-to-earth and pragmatic. And I don’t think I would be where I am now if that date hadn’t changed. Whereas the original barrister was perfunctory and supercilious in his pseudo-Eton demeanour, Luca treated me like an equal.

I was bewildered, angry and scared by the time I got to court date 2, not sure whether a flee to Turkey was on the horizon.

To be continued…