Supervised Contact is a form of domestic abuse.

Try to look at it this way. The courts make you jump through hoops like a dog. Yes, like a dog. I did it as well. I did it to see my girl. I set my pride and my principles aside.
Once you jump throuh these hoops, the courts increase access. Just stay clean and just obey. Consider it like a filter.

The day will also come where your ex will try to ask the judge to give less contact and the judge will turn to your ex and say "No, this father will see more of his child". Sit back. Be patient. It will happen.

So the courts put a gun to my head.

Accept supervised access and in doing so admit to some extent that you need to be monitored or lose your children? The US legal system views Parental improvement courses and supervised access as an admission of guilt.

What kind of justice is that? If this was being done routinely to women as much as it is to men then society would not stand for it.

James,
Last year i was where you are. I got a barrage of false allegations. The court put on a hearing for November. Now there is a vice-like grip on the ex to produce evidence. She is doing everything to get out of it. The justice system does take time. I used to have sleepless nights thinking "how can the system treat me like a criminal?". Now I know my ex is the one with sleepless nights "how am i going to get out of this hearing?". tables do turn... Just be calm, Be patent. Be honest.

James - ‘Abuse’ seems such an elastic term these days - applied to finance, emotions, marital relations. Surely it would extend to depriving a parent of seeing his child or creating conditions whereby parenting becomes a humiliating ritual. What you’ve said is fair comment in my book.

That said, I think you need to find a coping strategy that diminishes the ex’s importance, reduces the stress your under and allows you to remain calmly focussed on the main goal of trying to remain in your child’s life. Seeing yourself as a victim is, I think, counterproductive in that it magnifies the sense of injustice and just winds you up. The system and the ex are what they are; hurdles to be navigated.

You have had a lot of good advice and personal experiences have been shared with you.

Does it really matter what your views on the law are? The only thing that matters are your children.

1) You accept supervised contact
2) You don''t

If you take the first route, you will prove you are a committed Dad who will do whatever it takes to keep contact going.

Take the second route, and you will establish a dangerous status quo of no contact, and your children will think you have abandoned them.

The court will challenge you to explain why there has been no contact or any attempt to establish contact.

I took the decision that you are all talking about more than a year ago.

I have no contact with my children. There is a court order stating that.

I have made no telephone calls, written no letters and had no contact in more than 12 months.

My wife sends me cards from the children, begs my relatives to get me to talk to the children via Skype but yet refuses to back down on the need for supervised access and admit she lied on oath.

I email her female relatives and friends and get them to put pressure on her. She can see the harm that it is doing to the children and the disapproval of some of her closest friends and yet having spent 1000s to drag me through court will not do the right thing by the children and accept the loss of face.

Parents who get so caught up in the fight that they abuse their children. A daily occurrence in the UK family courts.

Courts that fail to act in the best interest of children.

James,

So does the Court Order exist because you flatly refused supervised contact at some point?

You say your ex dragged you through the courts?

How did you find yourself in a position of ''No Contact''?