By Lucy Caulkett-
The Family Court in London has brought an end to all direct and indirect contact between a six-year-old girl and her father, concluding that preserving an otherwise positive and loving parent-child relationship would carry an unacceptable risk of serious harm to the child through the deterioration of her mother’s mental health.
In a judgement handed down on 13 August, Mr Justice Garrido ,(pictured)described the case as a “deeply uncomfortable” choice between “two bad alternatives”, ultimately determining that the court had to select what he regarded as the “least worst” outcome for the child.
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The decision in AZ v BY and CX (by her children’s guardian) places the competing interests of parental involvement, the protection of victims of domestic abuse and the long-term welfare of children under unusually sharp scrutiny.
It is also a striking illustration of how the modern family justice system can approach contact cases where abuse has occurred not between parent and child, but within the former relationship between the parents and where continuing arrangements themselves threaten to perpetuate the consequences of that abuse.
The proceedings concerned CX, now aged six, and her mother, AZ, who sought an order preventing any further direct or indirect contact between the child and her father, BY. The application followed findings made by a district judge in 2023 that AZ had endured years of “extreme emotional and psychological abuse” before the couple separated in 2020.
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At that stage, the court had ordered a gradual progression from supervised to unsupervised contact between BY and his daughter, reflecting the importance traditionally attached to maintaining a child’s relationship with both parents.
That principle has deep roots in English family law. The Children Act 1989 established the modern statutory framework in which the welfare of the child is the court’s paramount consideration. The legislation was subsequently amended by the Children and Families Act 2014 to introduce a presumption that, where it could occur without putting the child at risk of harm, parental involvement would further the child’s welfare.
Crucially, the statutory concept of “involvement” does not prescribe a particular division of a child’s time between parents. The case therefore did not involve a straightforward rejection of the value of a father’s relationship with his daughter.
The court accepted that CX and BY had enjoyed a positive relationship and recognised that ending it would itself inflict profound emotional pain. But the evidence before the court established that the contact arrangements were having a continuing and damaging effect on AZ, who suffered from Complex PTSD associated with the historic abuse.
Her symptoms included persistent hypervigilance, severe physiological reactions to reminders of BY, nightmares and intrusive distressing thoughts. According to the evidence accepted by the court, contact placed her in a recurring cycle of anticipatory anxiety and physiological arousal, preventing meaningful recovery.
Chris Barnes KC, representing AZ, did not ask the court to disregard the importance of the father-daughter relationship. Instead, he argued that the established psychological consequences of the abuse meant that continued contact would ultimately “break” the mother, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the child who depended on her.
That argument confronted the court with an unusually difficult welfare calculation. If contact stopped, CX would suffer immediate and acute distress. She could experience confusion, anger, grief and a sense of abandonment.
If contact continued, the evidence indicated a serious risk that AZ, as the child’s primary carer, would become too psychologically unwell to meet CX’s needs adequately. The judge concluded that this was not a finely balanced case in the sense that the competing options were equally acceptable. Rather, both available courses carried serious harm, leaving the court to identify the option capable of producing the better long-term outcome.
The judgement comes against a broader evolution in the law’s understanding of domestic abuse and its effects on children. Historically, family proceedings could focus heavily on the continuation of contact while treating abuse between adults as principally a matter concerning the parental relationship.
That approach has increasingly been challenged by recognition that children can themselves be affected by domestic abuse even where they are not direct targets. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 expressly recognises as victims children who see or hear domestic abuse, or experience its effects, where the statutory conditions are met.
The 2021 legislation also reflected concerns about the treatment of domestic abuse within the family courts. Government explanatory notes record that an expert panel established by the Ministry of Justice in 2019 received more than 1,200 submissions concerning private-law children cases involving domestic abuse, and identified longstanding concerns about the management of risk and the potential for family proceedings themselves to become retraumatising.
The Act subsequently strengthened protections for victims in family proceedings, including provisions concerning special measures and restrictions on perpetrators personally cross-examining victims in certain circumstances.
Against that legal and social backdrop, Mr Justice Garrido found that every realistic possibility short of ending contact had been “robustly tested” without resolving the fundamental problem. Maintaining the existing arrangements, or substituting another form of contact, remained incompatible with AZ’s recovery from Complex PTSD ,and risked leaving CX without a sufficiently healthy primary carer. The judge therefore concluded that immediate cessation was the only course capable of safeguarding the child’s medium- and long-term welfare.
The order nevertheless recognised the emotional consequences of the decision. Contact was terminated immediately, subject to one final meeting intended to allow father and daughter to say goodbye. The court also imposed a three-year restriction under section 91(14) of the Children Act 1989, meaning that: BY cannot make further applications concerning CX without the court’s permission. Such orders can be used where further applications risk causing harm, and have acquired particular significance in cases involving concerns that litigation itself may become a continuation of domestic abuse.
But the judgement did not close the door permanently on reconciliation. The court expressly contemplated that a successful recovery by AZ, combined with BY engaging positively with recommended work, could eventually make a renewed relationship between father and daughter possible, without the restrictions that currently apply.
The immediate order, therefore, was not presented as a declaration that the parental relationship had no value, but as a recognition that preserving it at this point carried consequences the court considered more damaging to CX than the pain of losing contact. The case ultimately demonstrates the difficult limits of the principle that children benefit from relationships with both parents. Parental involvement remains an important feature of English family law, but it is not an absolute entitlement.
Where evidence establishes that contact threatens the welfare of the child through its impact on a parent who provides the child’s primary care, the court must weigh the benefits of preserving the relationship against the harm that preservation may cause. For CX, Mr Justice Garrido concluded, the least damaging path was also the most painful one. Ending a loving relationship now in the hope that protecting her mother’s recovery will give the child a healthier family life in the years ahead.
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