The visiting centre cancelled my visit on Tuesday 1st January because of the New Year’s Day holiday (even though there was a visit Christmas Day the week earlier). The father agreed to a substitute visit on Thursday 3rd January. I was then informed that the father had changed his mind and I could not have that visit after all. However, the visiting centre acknowledged that a visit was still owed to me and the father would make it up at a later date. I asked for last Sunday, the 13th January, but was told the father had ‘already made alternative arrangements.’

At the end of today’s visit I asked when I could have this substitute visit. I was told that the father no longer agreed to give it me and it’s now been cancelled! I asked why but no reason was given. I asked the woman from the visiting centre to confirm this in writing. She told me this ‘privilege’ would cost me 50 Euros! (in addition to the 42 Euros I must pay each visit- raised to 44 Euros next month).

The father is quoted in the court documents (2010) promising that should he be awarded custody, he would grant me a 50-50 split, that he would allow me to see the children whenever I liked and could even take them on extended holidays to England. Now I am lucky if I even get my once a week visit. Sammy and Benji are constantly deprived of contact with their mother.

A journalist from The Times wrote this week about a certain type of father:

“These fathers become curiously disengaged from their children as individuals to love and nurture. Instead, they treat them as possessions, ammunition in domestic deadlock.”

How tragic that so many innocent children are being used in this perverse way.