another day, another court, a step closer..

Today the tears were flowing - again!. My 13 year old headed off an an activity trip for three days - climbing mountains, abseiling, kayaking and whilst I am delighted she is going and so pleased she won a place on the trip yet again as her mother, I am fearful and I simply just miss her when she is away and worry. Yet I have brought her up to be independent, sensible and adventurous - to embrace new challenges - yet it simply hurts when I see her off on the bus knowing that other people will be responsible for her safety during the next few days - and after what we have been through trust is difficult.

I then had to speak to my son's headmaster ( he was ill today however the card his father sent has really scared him!) and to keep reassuring my son that he is safe. The head, as per usual gave me his dismissive "yes ok" but I know he thinks I overreact (probably because I brought the Equality Commission in when he refused to give my daughter any support in class for her dyslexia because she "wasn't dyslexic enough" - soon changed his tune when they came on board!). This led to another trickle of tears down my face - I wish sometimes there was a way that I could film those moments when the kids have been scared by their father - that people could see the fear and trauma is real because what they have lived through is real - that it is not an overreaction for a child to be scared of a person who has hurt them before, and it is not an overreaction to fear a court order being broken again when it already has been on numerous occasions. And so after calming down and diving back to bed with a duvet as I am suffering from a cold, I had to get up and set about the task of preparing for court again.

Despite the fact that my solicitor already has a 50 page affidavit from me and a similar number of appendices proving every lie 003.5 has told the court, demonstrating what he has done to cripple us financially as well as emotionally I am still required to supply further details for the FDR on 20th, particularly with regard to the impact on my career. Whilst I have all the info here, can prove the impact his behaviour has had and have all the text messages that show his lies the bottom line is I find it all so traumatic again - going through the details, reliving the nastiness, reliving the anger at what he has done and feeling this real knot of hatred inside me - hatred for everything he has done to me, to us. And whilst for the most part I can hold my head up, be proud we have come so far and not buckled I am so frustrated and angry at a system that has allowed him to do this to us for so long. Why should he be allowed to not turn up for court and delay proceedings for years on end? Why should he be allowed to ignore high Court Orders for information? Why was he allowed to delay the divorce for so long and thus delay any financial settlement? I was talking with a woman last week who was due to move on Friday however a mistake at her ex's solicitors meant that she got hold of correspondence saying he was pulling out of the financial arrangement they had. Across the top of the documentation was a note - "do not send to Friday". His plan was to ensure that his soon to be ex wife and children would be left with nowhere to live and no funds to buy a new property. Now, that she got hold of this was because it was either sent in error or someone in that office had a conscience. And I have no doubt that any hearing with regard to this would take months to arrange (I speak from experience) yet the courts do not seem to realise or quite simply ignore the fact that when you are bringing up children you need the money now - not next month, next year, in 5 years, you need to provide a home for them now! At the moment there can be no financial hearing until the decree nisi is issued - why? And in a new turn of events in Northern Ireland divorces are being denied whilst contact hearings continue with many women being forced to take ex's to court to give them contact with children they have not bothered with or are a danger to (I was in a situation 2 years ago whereby Social Services told me that if my ex had unsupervised contact my children would be on a child protection list and a family court that, despite lots of evidence were intent on giving my ex unsupervised contact) during which time I could not get my divorce (despite being separated nearly 4 years) and thus the ancillary process could not begin. (The one occasion he had unsupervised contact the children were so traumatised they were off school for two days!!). Why can the ancillary process not begin within 6 months of separation? let the family courts handle contact and the High Court handle the finances?

And then today I rang the DVO (Domestic Violence Officer) to discuss the latest breach of the no contact order. They, although sympathetic can do nothing as it is a civil court matter. The civil court will tell my ex not to do it again. He will ignore them again. Yet, not only is he a serving police officer he actually trains other police officers yet nothing can be done. I want to go and plaster everything he has done, and been allowed to do to us all over the papers, stick posters up of him and write what he has done all over his work place - but that would be seen as unreasonable behaviour on my part and damage my position in court. So I will save that for when I am free of this court system, keep my head down and thank god that I left him when I did. Some say that I will eventually learn to forgive him and that way I will find peace. Forgiveness - nahhhhhh - not a mission, not after what he has done to the children - however I will be able to move on and have a life when the courts eventually let me, when I no longer have to have anything to do with him and they take away the control that he still exerts over our lives now. Until that day (which hopefully is months rather than years away) I will just have to keep going and stay healthy. Now for another beechams blackcurrant!!