C (Children)

Judgment

Lord Justice Thorpe:

There is in this case quite a complicated history. The application and appeal all concern issues surrounding a father’s contact to the only relevant child, Raphael Miguel.

The parents, father and mother, met in 2002 and commenced co-habitation in 2004. It seems that their relationship was stormy and marred by violence perpetuated by father on mother. In May 2005 the mother reported to the police that the father had threatened to kill her. The father was bound over for a period of twelve months. Before its expiration he was arrested for assault and the parties separated. In May 2006 the mother obtained non-molestation orders for herself, for Raphael and for an older born child of hers. In June 2006 the father was convicted of common assault. In July he was sentenced to a community punishment order plus compensation and costs. He unsuccessfully appealed that conviction. In November 2006 he pleaded guilty to an offence under the Protection from Harassment Act and was fined for the offence and for breaching his bind-over.

So that can be summarised as a bad history of domestic violence.

In April 2007 the father applied for contact to Raphael. The case came in front of HHJ Copley in May, and over the last two years the case has been consistently in front of him, except for one occasion when it was before a recorder. It is unnecessary to record any of the several litigation events prior to 8 December 2008 when HHJ Copley refused the mother’s application for a fact-finding hearing. His essential reasoning was that such a hearing would be unnecessary and unhelpful to the future conduct of the case. He emphasised that the historic events had been the subject of conviction and punishment in the criminal justice system, that there had been no allegations of further violence and that contact was already underway and moving in a broadly satisfactory direction.

An application for permission to appeal that order was lodged in this court and was dealt with by Wilson LJ on paper. In refusing the application on 9 February, Wilson LJ said that the application was misconceived. He pointed out that the President’s practice direction of 9 May 2008 required a judge to consider the extent to which domestic violence would be relevant before directing a fact-finding hearing. He said that it would add nothing of relevance for the court to determine ten allegations of earlier domestic violence between 2004 and February 2006. He stressed that in the