Why I Am So Petrified Of Natalie
Please Consider If You Would Be Too
This post explains why I am terrified and just seek some safeguards against 10 more years of what has happened before:
2018-2023
Please see the Triple A post for a summary of the 5 years of abuse:
https://friendsoffairparentingpodcast.substack.com/p/triple-a-a-portrait-of-abuse?r=4r1csr
2023
Since not returning to the UK we spent many weeks mediating a good agreement. It had safeguards that would make me feel safe to return but Natalie walked away from it. Since then she agreed it twice more (August 2024 and November 2024) only to back out.
2023 - 2024
She instead abused Legal Aid to force me to attend over 12 High Court hearings. They were not needed. Even the judge said we were going round in circles. We had mediated a return agreement, Natalie just decided instead to use Legal Aid to destroy me rather than enable me to return so both of us could parent our child.
I could not pay for legal representation as my bank accounts and assets in the UK were frozen by her.
There was never any need since I was the one who suggested mediation and we had it scheduled before Natalie got any sanctions. They were all enabled by Legal Aid abuse and all sanctions were counterproductive - they made someone frightened even moreso.
At each hearing I asked for sanctions to be lifted and told court European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Article 6 - Right to a Fair Hearing - was being broken but nothing was done.
At each hearing I said I was too traumatised to read court papers or represent myself but I was forced to.
At each hearing I asked Natalie if we could sign our mediated agreement or seek more mediation to reach amicable agreement. She refused.
Instead she hired a violent thug (please see post on Miceal O’Hurley): https://friendsoffairparentingpodcast.substack.com/p/miceal-ohurley-canadian-assault-judgment?r=4r1csr
Despite mediation, since October 2023 Natalie has:
a) frozen my bank accounts - leaving my child and without those accounts for a year
b) frozen my house
c) run media stories for money - stories that may follow our child for decades
d) maliciously reported me to police abroad causing my child and I to attend a police statement more than once. What parent would do that to their child? This mirrors other examples like the paediatrician exam she made our daighter have after maliciously saying she thought I had torn our child’s vagina. Please see Social Services post for more details: https://friendsoffairparentingpodcast.substack.com/p/social-services?r=4r1csr
The overseas police investigated her recent reports and assessed me and my daughter and found nothing wrong. This mirrors the 17+ times she did the same in the UK previously. Police there sent court 112 pages of evidence showing I had done nothing wrong.
e) ruined my credit rating as frozen bank accounts stopped me paying bills
f) got me a 1 year jail sentence if I return to the UK in tough category B Pentonville jail
g) got the court to take my house. There was no need as I offered her the money she said she wanted but she preferred me and our child to lose our house. I have long said Natalie wants me jailed, homeless or dead. She has 2 of those now.
h) took around £10,000 of income I had in the UK
i) Deprived her own child - She has not contributed a penny to her child’s care in the last year. Worse she has taken income of mine in the UK and frozen my house and bank accounts to try and starve my child and I back - FOR A YEAR, despite having a mediated return agreement. Someone who is fearful of abuse is unlikely to be sanctioned into returning. It is clear this hasn’t worked but Natalie is still blocking me from my own funds for our child. Coercion through starvation seems to be her strategy. That a UK court would pile in on this for a year is worrying.
Conversely when Natalie abducted our child in 2019 she asked me for more maintenance and I doubled it because, whatever Natalie did, my focus is our child. Since that time, whether falsely accused, having to fight state funded lawfare, or facing 6 hour round trips to see our child I never reduced that maintenance. Contrast that child focussed approach with Natalie trying to starve us.
Natalie has no way of knowing on a day-to-day basis if we have food, shelter, medical care and whether our child has funds for education and play. By stopping access to my bank accounts she has no way of knowing what would happen if there was a medical emergency needing immediate funds to be spent on our child.
For a week after my accounts were frozen I didn’t know as the court hearing was secret and without me. For all Natalie knows a medical emergency could have happened and we may not have had funds. I am not saying we didn’t have funds but Natalie had no way of knowing - reckless behavious from a parent.
Natalie has shown no concern or parenting instinct with her sanctions - only desire to punish me into returning to jail and homelessness.
Her aggression was worrying. Had sanctions never happened and Natalie signed the agreement we mediated we could have been parenting in the UK since 2023. They only increased my fear of her and what would happen if we returned.
We have had a mediated agreement to return. Please consider the above plus the 5 years of abuse prior and the anger and rage in her medical notes that pre-date ever meeting me.
Is it any wonder I am frightened of what she will do if I return? Would you be?
I asked the High Court to write a protective order based on what parents agreed. I said it would enable return. They constantly ignore my pleas. The world has watched aghast since summer 2024 as UK court let paedophiles walk free, let violent criminals out of jail early while jailing people for social media posts. The UK courts are not working as we were brought up to believe. The world has seen this with everyone from Elon Musk to ordinary tourists now saying it might not be safe to go there.
Both Natalie and the court had the ability to close the case by writing an order based on our mediated agreement.
Instead they wasted tens of thousands of pounds of Legal Aid on hearings to jail me and take my family’s house. This case shows so many of the glaring flaws in the UK’s family court system where Legal Aid is weaponised to destroy.
There are 2 distinctions to make on Legal Aid:
Overseas cases where a parent doesn’t return to the UK automatically get Legal Aid. That’s fine and understandable. What isn’t is how a parent can get Legal Aid for a year after they mediated a return agreement and how it can be used, not to bring about return, but to destroy the parent who is just seeking safeguards to return. We agreed return in 2023 but Natalie walked away from it to use Legal Aid to sanction me instead.
Cases in the UK with no international element. These commonly feature false allegations by a parent seeking Legal Aid. It is part of a family court playbook Natalie used. It creates an unlevel playing field where an innocent person has to use their life savings defending false allegations while an abuser gets state funding with no consequence when they are found to have lied. Not only is there no consequence they can simply start again with more allegations and the funding continues until the targeted innocent party is ruined. It also elongates cases so, by the time lies are exposed, the abuser may claim a child is settled and a court may agree. The whole Legal Aid system is often gamified by abusers.
You don’t need any credible evidence to get Legal Aid. Natalie’s allegations were found at trial to be false and malicious yet following the trial she got Legal Aid which she used for nearly 2 years to prolong the case and ruin my life savings.
Innocent people cannot fight what is in effect state funded abusers. People who have used Legal Aid and are then found to have lied never seem to have to pay it back and are never prosecuted for perjury. They seem able to carry on with the same abuse and the courts offer no protection to the targetted parent and child.
Value for money for the UK taxpayer? No. Great business for the lawyers? Yes. Helping a traumatised and abused parent to return in safety? No. Enabling further abuse? Yes.
Natalie has caused tens of thousands of pounds in Legal Aid to be wasted for malicious reasons.
Note - there is more on Natalie’s Legal Aid abuse here
https://friendsoffairparentingpodcast.substack.com/p/legal-aid-abuse
Most of the Legal Aid funding was completely and evidently wasteful as I have said to the court sanctions are counterproductive as if I return without some safeguards I would face 10 years of abuse and alienation and that is worse than any jail sentence. They don’t care about the effect of that on me and our child. For 5 years they stood by and saw Natalie abuse me and they would do the same again.
In an earlier 4 day trial court judged Natalie wanted to alienate our child (please see Court Judgments post). Conversely, I am not trying to stop Natalie parenting our child. I have nothing against her, I just want the abuse to stop. I desperately wish for us both to parent our child in a robust co-parenting agreement with safeguards to stop a repeat of 2018-2023. We could have returned a year ago as we reached agreement but Natalie has eschewed that to go on the rampage.
She has thrown away 1 year of parenting to destroy me. I think the evidence of the last year shows she wants to destroy me more than parent her own child. Also, taking her child and my family’s house shows she doesn’t mind hurting other people, even people she doesn’t know and her own child, as long as she can hurt me. Yet in 6 years she cannot explain to anyone what I have done apart from seek safety.
That is one of the reasons I am so frightened. Social Services (please see the post on them: https://friendsoffairparentingpodcast.substack.com/p/social-services?r=4r1csr) wondered if Natalie would prioritise our child. Clearly she is prioritising rage against me first, parenting second.
This isn’t new. Please see the Triple A post for what happen in the first 5 years of the case. In 6 years all I ever did was seek refuge from abuse. Nobody found any cause in my behaviour that explained Natalie’s aggression. That 5 years of inexplicable abuse, the lack of protection or safeguards, and the likelihood of repeat makes be petrified of her. Would you be?
It is a tragic case. All I seek is some credible safeguards. Given the history is it too much to ask?