IMPORTANT NOTICE
This judgment was delivered in private. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published on condition that (irrespective of what is contained in the judgment) in any published version of the judgment the anonymity of the children and members of their family must be strictly preserved. All persons, including representatives of the media, must ensure that this condition is strictly complied with. Failure to do so will be a contempt of court.
Case No: BB14P00281
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
SITTING IN THE FAMILY COURT AT PRESTON
IN THE MATTER OF THE CHILDREN ACT 1989
AND IN THE MATTER OF: I & ORS (CHILDREN)
The Law Courts
Sessions House
Lancaster Road
Preston
Wednesday, 16 th November 2016
Before :
HER HONOUR JUDGE SINGLETON QC
Sitting as a Deputy Judge of the High Court
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Re: I & Ors (Children)
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Transcribed from the Official Tape Recording by
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Suite 204, Kingfisher Business Centre, Burnley Road, Rawtenstall, Lancashire BB4 8ES
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The Applicant Father appeared In Person
Counsel for the Respondent Mother: Ms Cragg
Counsel for the Child (MA-A): Ms Tankel, solicitor for the Child, Mr Blackburn (attending judgment only)
Solicitor for the Child (H I): Ms Foster
Hearing dates: 31 st October 2016 to 4 th November 2016; 16 th November 2016
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JUDGMENT APPROVED
HER HONOUR JUDGE SINGLETON:
1. The parties in this case are IA, who is nearly 53; he was born in Pakistan in 1963 and he is the father of the children with whom I am concerned and the original applicant in the case. R A-N is 35. She was born in Burnley in 1981 and she is the mother of the children with whom I am concerned and the respondent to the applications that the father has made. The children with whom I am concerned are:
H I, who was born in August 2003 and therefore is just 13. She was born in Pakistan; and
MA-A, born in May 2007 in Manchester. He is therefore 9½ years of age.
2. Those children are parties to the proceedings, both acting, until the week before the hearing, through their children's guardian, Rose Topping, and their solicitor, Mr Blackburn. Just before the hearing, it became evident that H, being in disagreement with the recommendations to be made by the children's guardian, was of an age and an understanding to be entitled to separate representation. Hence the position I have just outlined as to her representation changed. The mother and the father went through a religious ceremony of marriage, the nature of which is not agreed between them, in March 2002. The father was at that point still married to his second wife, Ro A. I think that was also a religious and not a civil marriage.
The Proceedings
3. In October 2014, at the end of protracted wardship proceedings in the Family Division of the High Court about these children, Mr Justice Holman made an order which discharged that wardship and provided for any further applications concerning H and M to be made in the Lancashire Family Court. Very shortly after that order, the father duly made an application for a child arrangements order that the children should live with him. In fact, they had been doing so since September 2013 and had no contact with their mother since that time. His application was proceeding relatively slowly thanks to what appears to be on/off engagement by each of the parties before the District Judges.
4. In May 2015, the father added to his application for a child arrangements order an application for permission to remove the children permanently from the jurisdiction to go and live in Pakistan. Pakistan is not a Hague Convention country and the case needed therefore to be transferred, initially to me sitting as a Circuit Judge in the Family Court, now as a Deputy Judge of the High Court, the Family Division Liaison Judge for this region having released it to me to sit in that capacity. The mother opposes all of the father's applications and ideally would seek orders that would mean that the children go and live with her or, failing that, to have direct contact with her. Given the history of this matter, its complexity and the gravity of the allegations each parent made against the other, I, at an early stage, joined the children as parties and appointed Rose Topping, the CAFCASS officer, to become the children's guardian. Hence, as I have described, they are parties and separately represented.
5. In September 2015, on the father's application, I made provision for him to be able to leave the jurisdiction to Pakistan whilst the children stayed with their older half-sister, S, who is one of the father's daughters by his second marriage to Ro A. She is married to his nephew, her first cousin, and has children of her own. She is also a foster carer. She and her husband came to court and gave undertakings to safeguard the children against wrongful removal to Pakistan without the authority of the court; it was the mother's case that the father had done that in the past, both to these children and to older children and indeed had participated in the wrongful removal from the jurisdiction of the children of his brother. That was the background to the complex wardship proceedings. The father was to use his trip to Pakistan in the autumn of 2015 to gather evidence in support of his application for permanent removal.
6. Ultimately I listed the final hearing of his application for three days commencing on 19 th January 2016. During the course of the proceedings I saw H; the children have remained as reported by their guardian extremely enthusiastic to go and live in Pakistan. At that January hearing, the father's application was supported by the children's guardian. The mother opposed it. She attended the hearing via video link from a court location close to where she lives in the south of England and was representing herself.
7. It soon became obvious during that hearing that there were facts and issues from the history of this family that were firstly highly concerning in and of themselves and, secondly, directly relevant to the application that was being made by the father to remove the children permanently to Pakistan. The father's daughter by his second marriage, S, to whom I have already made reference, came to give evidence in support of him. During the mother's cross-examination of her, the following facts emerged as confirmed: that S had undergone a ceremony of marriage with her first cousin in 2002 when she was only 15 years of age and only a month after she had arrived in Pakistan with her father and sisters, So and Ha, who were then aged 14 and 11. Their mother, Ro, was already there with Am, who was then 6 years of age and F, then 3 years of age. All of those family members were in Pakistan on what they thought would be a short trip. In fact, in the case of So, Ha, Am, they were not able to leave Pakistan until the summer of 2005. S never went back to school once she had been taken to Pakistan until she was able to complete her education after her return in 2005.
8. R, going back to the hearing before me in January, acting in person through a video link, sought to elicit from S in her cross-examination of her an account that So, Ha and Am had been kept in Pakistan in very poor conditions, against their will, with her, from 2002 until 2005. S did not accept R's interpretation of events but it was very clear that the issues raised by R about the father's conduct to his unmarried younger daughters when they were children needed to be properly investigated by the children's team and evidence heard about them before a proper decision could be made in this case. Furthermore, it was plain that the mother, R, was a vulnerable person in some considerable difficulty running her own case in these exceptional circumstances.
9. Therefore, the wheels on the wagon of that hearing came off and I was obliged to adjourn the case, with some considerable sadness, because I knew that the children were very enthusiastic, if not desperate, for an early decision. I wrote to the children to explain what had happened and in response to the letters that they had written to me under the guidance of their guardian. In February 2016 I met with H with the children's guardian and her then solicitor, Ms Griffin. Following the January hearing, great efforts were made by the children's team to trace Ro, So, Ha, Am and F, in order that their account of their time in Pakistan could be ascertained and, if necessary, for them to become witnesses in this case.
10. On 1 st April, I conducted what was a tense hearing which was attended by S, So and Ha and it became clear that for different reasons in each case they intensely resented becoming involved and would become witnesses only unwillingly. So and Ha persuaded me that it was not necessary for Am or F to be involved as witnesses in the proceedings. They were very young during the relevant events and they did not need therefore to be involved. So and Ha reluctantly agreed to engage with the process and to assist the children's solicitor to locate and talk to their mother.
11. Statements of evidence were thereafter gathered by the children's team from Ro, So and Ha. Their evidence confirmed much of what the mother had put in the January hearing and was both concerning and relevant. In response to it, I directed that the relevant Local Authority prepare a report under section 37 of the Children Act 1989. That report agrees that the evidence, by then gathered by the children's team, was extremely concerning but they await the outcome of the court's decisions over the disputed facts. I note that they are not present today to hear the judgment. I have no doubt that the children's guardian will convey the conclusions I have come to.
12. Fortunately, the mother was then able to become represented and she has made an application for a forced marriage protection order in respect of H. I listed the case for final hearing for five days between 31 st October and 4 th November 2016 this year. The children's guardian's final analysis of 21 st October this year concluded that on balance she no longer recommended that the father be granted permission to remove the children permanently to Pakistan and she was supportive of a forced marriage protection order being made. She conveyed those conclusions to the children, having reached them. H was in disagreement with Ms Topping. Indeed, she was so angered by the revised recommendations that she was reduced to tears, insisting that there was no evidence that she would not be sent to school in Pakistan or that she would be forced to get married too young.
13. Ms Topping correctly identified that H is of an age and ability to instruct her own representatives. It thus became necessary for H to be separately represented and a legal team on her behalf were approached. However, even with an unusually fast processing of her Legal Aid application and full-out preparation on their part, it was plain they would not be in a position to be ready to deal with the case for a final hearing in the slot where I had listed it. I, thus, decided at an emergency directions hearing which took place on 27 th October, the Thursday before the case was due to start, to continue with the listed hearing but without H's team but rather than have it as a final hearing to use it to listen to the evidence concerning the facts in dispute and conduct in effect a fact-finding hearing of the allegations which arise from the evidence of Ro, So and Ha and to a certain extent the mother herself, R.
14. I listed, therefore, an outcome hearing at which H could be separately represented which is to take place in early December. It did not seem to me unjust to H to proceed with the fact-finding hearing without her being separately represented because she could not possibly have an evidential input in respect of those disputed matters, either because she was not born or she would have been a very young baby indeed at the time of the key events. On the day following that emergency hearing on 27 th October, at which the father represented himself, although he intended to be represented during the hearing the following week, the proceedings took an unusual turn. An email was received from the father's solicitors seeking to withdraw his application to remove the children permanently from the jurisdiction and asking that the long awaited hearing the following week be vacated or shortened. This was despite the application having been pursued by him with some vigour for nearly 18 months.
15. I determined that I would deal with that application to withdraw on the first day of the hearing and on that day the father attended, represented by Ms Micah of counsel. I requested on that day that the children's guardian and H's newly appointed solicitor, Ms Foster, who indeed came off leave to do this, go and see her to discuss with her the father's stance. Remarkably, what was reported back to me when they came, given her response to the guardian the week before when the revised recommendation had been given, was that she was apparently entirely and quietly accepting of her father's decision but merely requested that permission be given to her to be able to travel abroad for holidays including to Pakistan. In other words, what was substituted for an application to remove permanently was an application to be able to go temporarily. The father also wanted such permission, although he seemed not to want to participate or go ahead with the hearing I conducted.
16. It, thus, seemed to me that whether his application and the position of the separately represented child was for permission to remove the children permanently or temporarily, it was still necessary for the factual issues raised by the older family members' evidence to be tried. This is a family whose custom over decades has been to go to Pakistan for extended visits and then to return. The question of whether their rights to come and go in this way should be restricted in order to offer them protection that in H's case, and indeed in M's case, they do not want or consider necessary, does need to be resolved. I understand, that although there have been labyrinthine proceedings concerning the children of this family and of the father's extended family, evidence has not been heard before about what exactly has gone on. I was concerned that the opportunity for the issues at stake to be tried and decided should not be missed, particularly after the great effort that had been made by the children's team to get the case ready for a fair hearing of those issues. That effort, of course, had been made on public funds.
17. The father's legal representation therefore withdrew after I determined that I was going to continue with the hearing in those circumstances. That was simply because he did not have the money to pay for them. He proceeded in person but made it plain that he did not wish to cross-examine his older children or his second wife. He used the word "confront". He did not want to confront them. The father has had a Punjabi interpreter provided by the Court Service during all of the hearing. I am confident that he is and was aware of the limitations of running his case in the way that I have just described, in other words by not cross-examining conventionally, but chose to do so nonetheless.
18. The mother's engagement with the court process has also been limited and intermittent. A month or so before the hearing, she had written to the court directly asking for a video link. Her solicitors had not known that she was doing this and she did not appear to have kept in touch with them. She was represented during the hearing by Ms Cragg of counsel. She did not attend in person. I had directed that she should and indeed had she chosen to do so her costs in travelling from where she lives to Preston and staying here would have been funded by the Legal Aid agency. She chose not to do so but she did give Ms Cragg instructions by telephone during the hearing. This had its limitations but enabled Ms Cragg to put her case to the witnesses.
19. During the hearing, I heard the evidence of the father, Ha, So, Ro and S. In addition to the oral evidence, I had extensive documentation, both for these proceedings but also from various other proceedings. Counsel for the child and for the mother, respectively, assisted me to ensure that the topics of the father's challenges to the accounts of his second wife and daughters were put to them despite his approach of not wishing them to be cross-examined or confronted. Unfortunately, the exigencies of family work now mean that in addition to this matter my list was packed with other matters. This meant that I did not conclude hearing the submissions of all parties until one o'clock on Friday, 4 th November. I suggested to the parties that I intended to hand down judgment later that afternoon but realised as soon as I started to work on it that it was likely that I would have had to start much later than the afternoon and would have ended up having an extremely late finish which I determined was unfair on all the protagonists. I, therefore reserved my judgment until this week.
The Background Facts and Issues Outlined
20. I A, the father, comes from a village in the Gujrat region of Pakistan which is about two hours south of Islamabad by road. There are two other larger places close to the village. They are called Dinga and Kharian and I have the impression that they are medium sized towns from the evidence. I also have the impression from the evidence that the father's family are prominent in the community of his village and relatively prosperous. They have two houses on farms outside the village which have recently been rebuilt and also two houses in the village itself.
21. The father was married to Ro A in February 1986, just before her 19 th birthday. He was 23. She had met him when she was 17. He had previously been married to a first cousin in Pakistan. That marriage was not successful and had broken down. The father and Ro have five children. The father and Ro finally separated, in circumstances I am going to come to, in early 2003. During their life together, they travelled to and from Pakistan where the father and Ro's family had originated. This included two extended periods of living in Pakistan for several months.
22. Ro and the father's relationship was souring by 2002 and he began a relationship with R, the mother of the children with whom I am concerned. She was then only 20 years of age. He was 39. She says that she did not know that he was already married until she was presented with Ro and her children in Pakistan. I have not heard her give evidence and therefore I am unable to say whether I find this to be true or not. At about the same time that this was going on in this father's family, his brother's marriage to the mother of his older seven children, was under strain. The family tree that I have shows that his brother now has four more children by a second wife. At that time his brother and his first wife and their children also lived in England.
23. In about April 2002, Ro went to Pakistan with Am, who was then 6, and F, who was then 3, for a holiday and to visit the father's family. The father followed them to Pakistan, taking with him S, So and Ha. He took them out of school in order to do that and told them it was for a holiday. Within a very short time of their arrival, S had become married, perhaps not to cohabit until after her 16 th birthday, but married nonetheless. The father and S now suggest that this was not prearranged but simply as a result of her arriving in Pakistan and seeing and liking her cousin. So and Ha suggest in their evidence that the plan that she should be married to her cousin was made before the departure from England. It seems to me likely that this marriage was considered desirable and had been talked about before the departure of the girls with their father by the father and his sister over the telephone.
24. The father installed Ro and her children in a flat in Kharian. That is one of the towns near to the village. Ha and Am went to school in Kharian. It seems that the family had looked at boarding schools in Islamabad for those children, which had been rejected. There was a dispute between them as to the quality of those schools. So went to live in the village to care for her paternal grandmother who was by then over 80 and unwell. All the family speak of the paternal grandmother with fondness and affection. She died in 2005. However, So, who was only 14 years of age, ceased from that point to go to school and did not undergo any formal education in Pakistan whilst she was there.
25. The father was by that time coming and going between his village, Kharian and the United Kingdom. His relationship with R was well underway. This travelling backwards and forwards is corroborated by the fact that on 30 th May 2002 he received a caution for theft from the Thames Valley Police for a theft committed in December 2001. I have not heard any evidence about that. I merely recite it to confirm the impression I have that he was coming and going whilst the family were fixed in Pakistan.
26. In December 2002, Ro, Ha, Am and F were surprised when the father turned up unexpectedly in Kharian at their flat. He took them from there with him to the village to his sister's house where there was a big gathering going on. The father's brother and six of his children were there and so was R. She was at that time a stranger to Ro, So and Ha, although Ro believes she may have seen her before on the street in England hanging around the family's house. Again, I have not heard evidence about that and make no findings but in essence she was a stranger to them all. Initially, they thought she might be a nanny to the six children.
27. Ha and So say that there was much boasting going on at that gathering on the part of F's brother, I and R that they had succeeded in bringing six children out of the United Kingdom without the knowledge or consent of their mother who had been tricked into trusting her husband and allowing the children to be in his sole care for what she had believed would be a short period. It was suggested that I and R had taken part in this, helping to get the children to Paris through the Channel Tunnel and thereafter flying from Paris to Turkey and on to Pakistan. Ha and So told me of the general pride round about, about this having been done as a matter of honour. As I understand it, those children never returned to the care of their mother and there were wardship proceedings in the High Court concerning them.
28. The father, supported by S, says this is just not true, that the six children of his brother had arrived a couple of days before him and that he and R had had nothing to do with their journey from England. That day was memorable for this family for another reason because it was, as I have begun to describe, when the father presented Ro and her children with R and the fact that he had married her. I do not think it is in dispute to say that it was his intention at that time that he should live in his village with both women as his wives in a polygamous arrangement. He says that he regrets this now, indeed, he appeared to express deep regret for it.
29. The Ro family were moved permanently to the village and for a short time were reunited, that is So, Ha, Am and F, with their mother. S was also living in the village but she had been living there with her in-laws. She moved to live with her in-laws, on her account, when she was 16. Ro and So both give an account of the father assaulting R with a shoe for having made a telephone call to her mother in disobedience to him on that first night. Ro, Ha and So all describe the presence of firearms round about the village and in the properties owned by the family as commonplace. Both Ro and Ha describe separate occasions of the father wielding a gun in order to threaten them. Ro describes him in her statement saying to her, "This is not England. You are in Pakistan now. What are you going to do?" This was in response to her resistance to his plan that she should live in a polygamous arrangement with him and R.
30. Ro's account is that she was able to persuade the father to let her go back to the UK to see her father and that So, who confirms this, in turn was able to persuade him to let her mother take F with her. All the family relate how So was in fact the father's preferred child at that time, hence her ability to persuade him. They all say that he would not let her take the girls with her. S was by now out of that family and living with her aunt, her mother -in-law, as I have related. Ro left Pakistan in February 2003 with F. From that point, the father did not facilitate any form of contact between the girls and their mother. His family's account is that she did not want to see them. I am sad that this was said by S in her evidence to me. I am quite satisfied that it is not true and is a corrosive myth.
31. The father's account varies between a suggestion that not having contact was Ro's choice in accordance with what S said to me and a suggestion that in a telephone conversation between him and Ro's father, that her father had said to him, "You look after your daughters and I will look after mine". I remind myself that Ro at this point would have been in her late-30s. When, during the hearing on several occasions I used the term "patriarchy" or "patriarchal", it was this alleged conversation that I had at the forefront of my mind, suggestive as it is of men deciding what should happen to women without any respect at all for those women's own preferences.
32. Ro did not get to see her daughters again until 2005 when she received a telephone call out of the blue from So. Ro was able to start wardship proceedings in the UK and travelled to Islamabad to meet So, Ha and Am after their escape from the village in May 2005, which had been facilitated by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Ro told me in her evidence of the rush to do all this which meant that she had to meet the costs of the proceedings, the trip to Pakistan, the cost of accommodation, security at the Embassy and flights for everyone concerned herself. She told me that she is still in great debt for all of this and is still repaying it at £35 a month with more than 100 months still to go. It is perfectly plain to me there is no question but that she was desperate to be reunited with her daughters throughout their separation.
33. So, Ha and Am were therefore left behind in the village in Pakistan, nominally looked after by an aunt in a household where their paternal grandmother resided and who, as I have already said, was ill. They were aged 15, 12 and 7. So's schooling had ceased sometime before, as I have set out. Ha and Am moved from the school in Kharian to the village school. Ha did well at that school but there came a time on her account, not essentially contradicted by her father, when she was stopped from going to school. She says her schooling was brought to an abrupt end after an argument between her and R. She says that the attitude of her paternal aunts, who cannot read, was that girls do not need to be educated. She also says they had a similar attitude to nutrition, suggesting that girls do not need to grow tall. So and Ha are both tall and strikingly so.
34. By this time, So, Ha and Am were living in the village across a courtyard from R. Their household included their grandmother and their aunt. The girls were given, on their account, onerous domestic chores to do. They each describe a regime that seems very similar to the account of life that might have been given by a Victorian servant: up at dawn, fetching water, cleaning, baking and doing chores. The father produced many pictures of events before this time suggestive of good family occasions. There are no photographs of this period. It was by everyone's account a deeply unhappy time. Conditions were primitive. There was no running water in their part of the house.
35. The telephone landline was disconnected shortly after Ro's departure, possibly deliberately in order to stop contact with Ro. The girls were not well-nourished. Every day there were arguments between R and the girls who were loyal to their mother and hated her. The paternal grandmother, on the account of Ha, tried to install a more philosophical approach to R on Ha's part. Ha was possibly the most vociferous of Ro's daughters at the time. R has not given evidence, so I have not heard her side of it, but the daughters describe R's presentation as one of unpredictability and of being in the ascendancy so far as their father was concerned, by which I mean it was their perception that he always sided with R.
36. H was born in August 2003. Ha says that there were a number of occasions when R behaved abusively to H, for example, slapping her when she soiled her nappy and generally being impatient with her infant demands. So confirms those impressions. Even S reported seeing what she described as an over-vigorous winding of H by her mother. I have not heard the evidence of R and it is difficult to determine these allegations without having heard from her.
37. In April 2004, the father had a motorcycle accident in Pakistan. The doctors in Pakistan thought it was going to be necessary to amputate his leg. He, therefore, arranged to return to the United Kingdom for medical treatment and he did so in April 2004. Incidentally, his return to the United Kingdom prompted Ro, who had, by that time, returned here, in alarm to go into hiding to prevent him being able to take F from her care. R returned with him. That left H in Pakistan, apparently in the care of a paternal aunt, but according to the evidence of So and Ha they were left to take care of her. They had had nothing to do with this child up until that point but on their account they found her effectively abandoned on a bed in the courtyard of the village house, in full sun, and in a poor state with both nappy rash and eczema. There are photographs of beds in the courtyard as they described them. The half sisters cared for her from that point on their account for more than a year.
38. According to the evidence of So and Ha, they eventually decided to break into a trunk in the adjoining house in the courtyard which had been left behind by R. They were looking for money. They found instead a mobile telephone and they were able to use the sim and/or to obtain a sim for that phone to get in touch with their mother and initiate the process of their own escape. The father's account is that all of that was quite unnecessary. There were no firearms. Not attending school was his daughters' choice. He would have arranged contact with their mother and/or a return to the United Kingdom, if only they had asked. This is also the account given by S.
39. Instead of simply asking, which is all their father now says would have been necessary, his daughters arranged an elaborate escape with staff from the British Embassy in Islamabad who arrived to collect them in a secret rendezvous close but outside the village. The girls had oiled the doors in the house where they were living to stop them squeaking and alerting anyone to their departure. They had taken the trouble of wearing out H, so that she would be asleep during their departure. They made outfits from bed sheets, so as to make it difficult for them to be recognised or described. Most chillingly, they had all agreed in advance that if any of them did not make it from the house to the vehicle that person would be left behind. They had to leave H behind and I assume that they have not seen her since.
40. By 2006, the mother and father's relationship had broken down. She commenced wardship proceedings to get H back from Pakistan. That process was complicated and prolonged by difficulty in getting H her British passport. A number of hearings took place and various orders were made. H's mother's engagement with the process vacillated, as it has in these proceedings. The mother and father reconciled at times and went together to Pakistan. H eventually came to the United Kingdom with her mother when her mother returned with her in March 2007. M A-A was born shortly thereafter in the United Kingdom.
41. Since neither the mother nor the father were actively engaging in the hearings I have conducted, I have to approach the summary of the history and the evidence concerning it from that point of return in 2007 to date with some caution. There appear, as I have said, from the recordings of the orders in the High Court, to have been reconciliations between the mother and the father. There were other extended trips to Pakistan. There were concerns by the authorities about the quality of the care the children were getting and about their health. From time to time health professionals had concerns about the mother, R's, presentation. The mother and father were conducting a relationship between Salford, where the father was running a shop, and Slough, where the mother was living. There were arguments between the mother and her mother and sister. A mixed and confusing picture emerges from the documents.
42. In 2008, Slough Borough Council were involved after H was taken to hospital with a half-centimetre laceration to the back of her head said by her to have been inflicted by her mother as a punishment for not eating. The records show the mother cooperated with the child protection intervention after this and demonstrated good insight and cooperation. In 2010, a referral was made to the child protection services by the father via his general practitioner that the mother had threatened H with a knife. That was investigated but no concerns were confirmed and indeed H herself did not make any such disclosure.
43. In February 2012, a child protection conference was convened because of concern at how the mother was dealing with health issues. The records show that the mother cooperated with the local authority's intervention and the case was closed in December 2012. In September 2013, the children were taken by the father to Pakistan. The mother had at points leading up to this departure apparently cooperated in the plans for it by helping the father to get passports for them and in seeming to consent to it. Nonetheless, on the very day of their departure, she contacted the police but it was too late. The children were already gone beyond the jurisdiction of the police or the court. She re-started wardship proceedings. Several orders were made against the father to bring the children back from Pakistan. The children missed important medical appointments while they were away. It is not in dispute that whilst he was away in Pakistan the father remarried, this would be to his fourth wife. Apparently that relationship is also now over.
44. In July 2014, there was a telephone call from the father to the mother's solicitors in which he suggested that she should come out to Pakistan to collect the children because he had no funds to get them back. In fact, he did return with them in August 2014 and later that year the wardship proceedings were concluded by the order of Mr Justice Holman, as I outlined at the beginning. The children have had no contact with their mother since September 2013 when they were taken to Pakistan. They have resisted all attempts by anybody to set up contact. They have rejected even letters and cards from her. Since they have returned to the United Kingdom, their care in their father's household has been of a high standard. Their school
attendance is excellent. There are no unauthorised absences. This is in contrast to the picture from Slough when they were cared for by their mother. The father appears to be encouraging of them having a relationship with their mother or at least it can be said has demonstrated that to the children's guardian during her investigations.
The Law
45. I turn very briefly to the law. The law which applies to this fact-finding exercise is neither contentious, nor complicated. I am simply required to weigh the evidence to enable me to make findings or not on a simple balance of probabilities. If the evidence allows me to say that I consider something is more likely than not then I can find that something as a fact. The old fashioned contention that the more serious the allegation the more evidence is required to prove it has long since been laid to rest. I take of that summary of the law from
Re: B (
Care Proceedings :
Standard of Proof ) [
2008 ]
UKHL 35.
The Oral Evidence and My Impression of the Witnesses
46. The Father
He gave his evidence quietly and respectfully. He expressed sorrow over having a relationship with R when he was still married to Ro and over his attempt to live in Pakistan in a polygamous arrangement. He did not quite describe that conduct with that language but that is my language. He made some concessions about the basic conditions in the village house during the time that his girls were living there. He suggested that the motivation for his older daughters and Ro for giving their account of the forced life in Pakistan that I have described in summarising the outline was vengeance. He denied that the landline had been disconnected. He insisted that the girls would have been able to come to the United Kingdom at his arrangement if only they had asked. He also suggested that their maternal grandfather had told him that he must look after them as I have outlined when describing the issues. He denied any involvement in the abduction of his brother's children from England. He denied any mistreatment of R. He could not really explain to me why he was now withdrawing his application to move permanently to Pakistan.
47. Later, during the case, he brought a number of photographs which showed pictures of a happy family trip to Madame Tussauds, I think in London, with Ro and S, which must therefore have taken place, from S's age, in the early 1990s. He also showed me a home video of a primary school event from about that era in Maidenhead where the family were living. There were other photographs of the children looking at monkeys by the side of the road in Pakistan. There are photographs of S's wedding and other similar celebratory occasions. There were no pictures, as I have already said, of this part of his family from the point that Ro left Pakistan in February 2003.
48. The father sought to suggest that if there were these good times then he could not be the person portrayed by his older daughters. This represents a misunderstanding, it seems to me, of the issues. It is plain, as I come to tell when dealing with her evidence, that Ro was deeply hurt by his presentation to her of a second wife with whom he expected her to live with him. This confirms what her statement already had made clear which is that there were good times in this very long lasting relationship. However, I accept that towards the end Ro felt that she was isolated by the father and had been left caring for the five children of their relationship almost singlehandedly.
49. Overall, in listening to the father's evidence I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that what he permits the court, the children's guardian and the social workers to see of him is not the whole picture but rather what is left after a skilled deflection of any scrutiny. I agree with Ms Cragg's submission that that approach is best observable during his interview last December by the police about an allegation that he had defrauded Ro of her share of the proceeds of sale of their Maidenhead house. It will be recalled that I have already related how indebted she is from the process of recovering her children from Pakistan. She received none of the proceeds of that property. During the Police interview, the father can be seen to be working very hard to maintain an engaging, self-deprecatory humour and gently moving the officers away from focusing on the allegations. Remarkably, during that interview he was suggesting that the complainant against him was not in fact Ro but R pretending to be Ro. He seemed convinced of that. It plainly was not the case.
50. The other aspect of the case which suggests that what you see is not what you get with this father is the complete acceptance by H of her father's sudden strange decision to withdraw his application to go to Pakistan permanently after 18 months of pressing that case. Although she had been angered to the point of tears by her children's guardian's revised recommendation against that permission being granted, her position when seen on the first day of the hearing for her response to her father's withdrawal of his application was one of quiet acceptance. Given her previous vehemence and what I have observed of her strong personality, this seems to me to be remarkable evidence of his powerful dominance within this family.
51. Ha
Ha's evidence was persuasive. She was an articulate witness. She had a vivid recall of detail. She confirmed what was in her written statement. I have set much of it out already in my summary of the background and issues. She was explicitly clear about the family, including R and the father, boasting about the abduction of the six children of the father's brother. The day when that happened was as she said one of the worst days of her life and vivid in her memory. She described the misery of waking up on the day following her mother's departure and of the landline being cut off.
52. She told me that her mother had left her with just three English language books to read. There were two volumes of Harry Potter and William Golding's Lord of the Flies. She described how those books were her comfort every evening and she would read them constantly all evening, ultimately annoying her aunts, who, as I have already related, cannot read. Eventually she described how her father, in response to that annoyance, took all three books and ripped them up. She put them back together only to have them put by her aunt onto the fire as firewood. The account was chilling and compelling. She was plainly hostile to R but nonetheless sought to put the bickering between the girls of Ro's family with her in context which showed some insight and empathy on her part. She was still traumatised by her experiences.
53. I remind myself of the extreme unwillingness of those family members, Ha, So and Ro, to become involved with these proceedings. They do not seem to me to have set out to cause trouble or to gain revenge. They simply want to put the trauma of their time in Pakistan behind them. The topics of father's disagreement with her accounts were put to her by Mrs Tankel. He declined to cross-examine her as I have already related. She steadfastly maintained her accounts of the relevant incidents.
54. So
So was similarly impressive. She is now a serving police officer. She had a closer relationship with her father than Ha, as I have already described. She was viewed as his preferred child and was obviously saddened as well as traumatised by what she had to tell. Her accounts of the key incidents are consistent with Ha's but perhaps all the more persuasively not always exactly identical. Like Ha, she recalled the family boasting about the abduction of her uncle's children. She described the father assaulting R with a shoe after R had defied him to use a mobile to call her mother. So and Ro, remarkably, had intervened to stop this onslaught. So was slightly ashamed to tell me that her father had sent her, So, to spy on R whilst she was making a telephone call in order to tell him what R was doing. Like Ha, she confirmed the commonplace presence of numbers of firearms in the property where they were living. She had different recollections of the use they were occasionally put to. She did not recall the father threatening the family with a gun, including R, after R had apparently dropped H on her head when H was a baby. Nobody had actually observed this. She did confirm that the father had told her that she ought to go out when she and the rest of the family were alone in the property and shoot a gun into the air at 2am to warn off any possible attackers. She was clear in that description. She confirmed that she had taken responsibility for H after her mother's departure and gave a vivid and poignant account of that relationship. Like Ha, the father did not cross-examine So but his challenges were put by the child's team and like Ha she steadfastly maintained her accounts.
55. Ro
Ro was another impressive witness. She was traumatised and put into debt by her experiences. It is quite clear, as I have already said, that she had no choice but to leave her daughters when she left Pakistan with F. Her sadness and her guilt about this were still apparent. Her frustration at her inability to get appropriate help to get them back sooner than she did was tangible. Her account of being pushed from pillar to post, from the police in Scotland to a solicitor in England, was evident. It was not until she approached the charity Reunite that she was able to do anything constructive and then it all happened so quickly that her application for Legal Aid was not properly processed.
56. The father did cross examine Ro. Remarkably, he wanted to know why she had not let F see him when he came over for medical treatment in 2004. It seemed to me perfectly plain that she was terrified in 2004 when she heard that he was back that he might snatch F from her. His mild indignation and inability to grasp that was an unusual and notable feature of this hearing. Ro gave an account of the father threatening her with a gun when she was protesting about his treatment of her and the girls. Her account of what he said to her is I consider one of the indications of what has really gone on in this case. I have actually already set this out in the outline but I repeat it in repeating her evidence. He put the gun to her and said to her, "This is not England. It is Pakistan. What are you going to do about it?"
57. Throughout the evidence, the witnesses from the father's first family were assiduous in distancing S their sister and daughter respectively from any culpability and in not undermining her status as a happy wife to her cousin. They were all clear that she had chosen her path and that that was the right path for her. They were all clear that she was outside the household where the worst things had happened to them. None of them wished to say anything critical about S. It was, thus, very disappointing when S gave her evidence to find how determined she was to put over her father's version of events including what I consider to be false criticisms of So, Ha and Am. She suggested in respect of So, Ha and Am that being left behind in Pakistan was firstly their choice. It obviously was not their choice. Secondly she suggested it was their mother's choice. It obviously was not their mother's choice. S even went so far as to suggest that her mother had actually told her this during a meeting in the United Kingdom when she, S, had been allowed to travel back. This was a particularly unattractive piece of the evidential jigsaw demonstrating her determination to support her father and I reject it as patently untrue.
58. S also suggested that the leaving of So, Ha and Am in Pakistan was their maternal grandfather's choice. I have addressed this in part in outlining the issues. I do not accept this on the balance of probabilities. I think it likely that there was a conversation which the father has distorted in which the maternal grandfather emphasised that he expected the father to care for his granddaughters. That is not the same sentiment as agreeing that they should remain in Pakistan against their will and against their mother's will. That decision of S's, to stick with her father's accounts in defiance of the weight of the evidence, is I think another reflection of the power her father wields within this family. I do not consider that she was telling me the truth when she sought to distance her father and R from the abduction of the six children. Indeed, her account that they arrived a couple of days before her father simply mirrors his account and I reject it.
59. I am satisfied that S is happily married by her own choice to her first cousin. I am also satisfied that she has greatly pleased her father by the course she has chosen. She did so when she was only 15 and left full-time education to do so. She is plainly a skilled mother and a good nurturer and I suspect that H and Mo, the children with whom I am concerned, materially benefit from this now. I note that the United Kingdom Embassy in Islamabad approached S at the time when her sisters were getting out of Pakistan. She happened to be arriving back in Pakistan and needed a passport for one of her sons and so had to go the Embassy. She was offered the same level of intervention as her sisters to get her out and away from her father and her husband. I think she resented that offer. I find it sad that she is unable in my estimation to respect the fact that her choices and her sisters' choices are different. I find it sad that she cannot see that she has won her greater freedom and status within her family by her choice to adopt a traditional role and to accept the influence and decisions of the paternal family. I identify that at the heart of this case is the issue of how to preserve that choice for the children with whom I am concerned until a time when they are able to exercise it and with full knowledge and maturity.
60. In all the circumstances, therefore, my findings are these and I turn to Mrs Tankel's schedule that she helpfully prepared during the last day of the hearing. Plainly, the findings that I have made are also set out in the judgment I have so far given but these are the key findings:
(1) that S was married to her first cousin at the age of 15, less than a month after she arrived in Pakistan, apparently for a holiday;
(2) that the family was moved to Pakistan and that brought an end to the education of the older girls sooner or later;
(3) that the father presented the first family with the second wife with whom he wished to live a polygamous life and that was without Ro's consent and caused distress to her and her children by him;
(4) that the father moved the family from the city of Kharian into the village;
(5) that the father prevented Ro A from taking So, Ha and Am to the United Kingdom with her, thereby forcing those children to live without their mother for 2¼ years from February 2003 until the end of June 2005;
(6) that the father caused or permitted his sisters to use the three girls as domestic help in a way that was completely inappropriate;
(7) the father disconnected the landline and refused to allow even indirect contact between the girls and their mother;
(8) that the father caused Ha to leave school at the age of 13;
(9) that the father confiscated and damaged and subsequently allowed the complete destruction of Ha's only reading material;
(10) that the father brought the children into an environment where firearms were commonplace;
(11) that the father failed to bring the children back to the United Kingdom when he came here for medical treatment; and
(12) that he caused or permitted circumstances in which the children were obliged to escape with the assistance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
61. I also find that the father and R were, in some way that I cannot identify without having heard direct evidence from them, involved in the abduction of from the United Kingdom of six of his brother's children, one of whom was a 9-month-old baby, preventing those children from living in the care of their mother.
62. As I identified during the hearing and during the submissions, it seems to me a real possibility that in making those findings I am signposting a limitation upon the choices of one of the children with whom I am concerned. There is going to be an outcome hearing but I do want the professionals involved in advising the court as to what is in the best interests of the children to consider how it is going to be possible or proper to preserve for the children with whom I am concerned, and particularly H, the right to make the same choices as her sister, S whilst at the same time ensuring that any choice is made with full information, knowledge and maturity. At present there is no evidence that H wants the same as S.
63. I am not quite sure how that can be done and it is a problem that everybody is going to have to wrestle with. H, after all, is a child who was born in Pakistan, who identifies herself as being part of the community I have described and who has expressed a strong wish to return there. I understand that father has for the time being withdrawn his application to move permanently to Pakistan but it seems to me that I still have to examine for all those reasons whether to foist protection upon an intelligent 13 year old who does not want it. In such case I could properly be seen to be restricting her liberties and that is the knotty problem at the heart of this case. I look forward to the assistance of the professionals at the next hearing.
[Judgment ends]
