The High Court has issued a significant fact-finding judgement ruling that the father’s “calculated cruelty,” emotional withdrawal, and systematic undermining of the mother’s parental role constituted a pervasive pattern of domestic abuse, one which was rooted in the family’s unresolved grief.
Facts:
The father (F) made an application for a Specific Issue Order (SIO) to return seven-year-old V to Dubai. The mother (M) opposed the return, alleging an abusive environment. Both M and F were born in England and are British citizens. They met in 1999, began a relationship in 2002 and were married in 2003. Following their marriage, they initially lived in a house owned by F, then moved to Kenya, where F had just started a business. The couple remained in Kenya until 2018, after which they moved to Dubai. The couple had three children together. Their first child, S, a girl, was born in England on 30th October 2005, and their second, J, a boy, was born in 2007. V is their youngest daughter.
The family history is marked by the tragic death of their eldest daughter, S, in 2016 from a brain tumour. This event caused a profound and permanent rift in the marriage, since the parents adopted radically different coping mechanisms. While F adopted a strategy of emotional detachment and physical exercise, M suffered from chronic clinical depression and required significant psychological support that F was either unable or unwilling to provide.
F admitted to a calculated “freeze-out” of the mother, in which he deliberately limited his communication to monosyllables to isolate her. He further undermined her by calling her demeaning names, such as “fat,” “lazy,” and a “maid,” often in front of the children. In early 2023, M’s mental health reached a crisis point, culminating in a genuine suicide attempt involving both an overdose and an attempted hanging. The Court found that F’s response to this incident was extremely troubling, as he failed to call an ambulance or even seek immediate medical attention, despite discovering her in a life-threatening state.
Decision:
The outcome of this fact-finding hearing was a series of damning judicial findings against F, which will now form the basis for the next stage of the case. While M’s retention of the child in England was the initial trigger, the Judge focused heavily on F’s “calculated cruelty” and the toxic environment he created.
Ultimately, the Court described a household where F used his financial resources and psychological dominance to alienate M. The Court also examined the nature of F’s relationship with the other children, specifically with their eighteen-year-old son, J, and the impact of his behaviour on V. The Judge found that F had encouraged J to adopt a dismissive and “boorish” attitude toward M, mirroring his own abusive language. Regarding V, M alleges that the father was “buying her affections” with constant gifts and refusing to enforce any parental boundaries or discipline, thereby undermining her role. F, a successful businessman who had significantly reduced his work hours, had become deeply interwoven in V’s daily life, partly due to his religious belief that the soul of their deceased daughter lived on within V.
The Judge concluded that the entire family was caught in a “vortex of grief” and that F’s conduct constituted calculated emotional and psychological abuse.
Implications:
This judgement is a significant example of how modern courts are moving away from “incident-based” assessments of domestic abuse toward a “holistic” understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour.
The judgement suggests that when one parent recruits children into a “team” against the other, it is not a standalone phenomenon but is often a specific manifestation of coercive control. By finding that F’s disrespect was “contagious” to the children, the Court identified a form of emotional harm, one that impacts both the spouse and the child. The Court’s focus on the father’s “freeze-out” policy (e.g., monosyllabic speech) confirms that emotional withdrawal can be just as abusive as verbal aggression.
F’s belief that his deceased daughter lives on in V raised concerns about enmeshment, the implication being that a parent’s spiritual or psychological projections onto a child can be seen as a welfare risk if they prevent the child from being seen as an individual.
