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Mr Justice Bodey:
No report of this judgment shall disclose the identity of the child concerned nor any information likely to reveal her identity.
This is a mother’s appeal with the leave of a single Lord Justice against a fact-finding determination by HHJ Tyzack QC, sitting at Exeter, given at the conclusion of a three-day hearing in December 2008. He initially gave an extempore headline judgment when the hearing ended, in the hope of being able to proceed to the so-called “welfare” decisions about the child straightaway. His full written judgment came later, dated 19 January 2009 and delivered or handed down on 16 February 2009.
The child concerned is A, who was born on 17 May 2000 and was therefore eight at the time of the hearing. She is now aged nine. She was six at the time of the events in issue. She had and has a Rule 9.5 children’s guardian representing her interests. The children’s guardian is neutral as regards this appeal. I shall call the mother “the mother” and the father “the father”. The underlying question is as to the nature and extent of the father’s contact to A; simple enough one might think; but, as so often happens, it raised not only numerous disputes of fact, but also a need to try to gain some insight into the personalities of the parents and the dynamics of their relationship so as to form a view as to what was likely to have been going on with A and where the truth in various respects might lie.
The background shortly stated is as follows. In 1996 the parties were married, and A came along four years later in 2000. Unhappily, the marriage did not survive much longer than that, and it finally broke down in September 2002 when the mother left the matrimonial home with A. She has been A’s primary carer throughout. Contact arrangements were regulated by the Guildford County Court in May 2003, September 2003 and again in January 2004. These orders provided, in brief, for the father to have staying contact every alternate weekend and further contact during holidays, together with some visiting contact.
In April 2004 the mother moved with A from Surrey to Devon, a fact which the learned judge found had put added strain on the contact arrangements. Each parent accuses the other of being difficult about contact in different ways, but the fact remains that the mother did facilitate contact at all material times up until the events which I am about to relate.
On 21 December 2006 the mother issued a notice of application in the Exeter