Parenting with your abusive ex is a living nightmare

Thank you so much to the woman who wrote to me to ask me what I thought about co-parenting with an abusive ex.

This topic will be tough to write about (and read about, so take care whilst reading), but I wanted to think about it, and create a response here for all the women in this position with their abusive exes.

I thought a lot about this. I have personal experience of this, but I also have worked with and known many women in this situation, too. Sometimes this can be through court-ordered contact, and sometimes it can be where there is an attempt at amicable coparenting in an effort to avoid family court.

Women are forced to co-parent with abusers even when it has been confirmed that the father of the children is indeed abusive, but they often still have rights to visitation or contact (or shared custody).

Most people who have never been through the family courts will expect that if there is evidence that a parent is abusive, violent or harmful, the courts would agree that they are not fit to bring up children. However, this is very rarely the case, and in most cases, the courts will order contact or shared custody.

To put this into perspective, I have worked with women whose exes had convictions for violent offences (including domestic abuse and sexual violence), but were still expected to support contact with their children.

Some abusive men even have multiple relationships with multiple children, where all have been referred to social care or police due to their criminal behaviour, and they still have access and regular contact with their children.

The issue that most commonly occurs, is that courts can be quite dismissive of crimes committed against mum. If the bulk of the abuse and violence was towards her and not the children, it is common for courts to find that the ex-partner is ‘not a risk to the children’ and therefore should have contact with his children despite what he had done to Mum.

This leaves Mum in a very difficult position - where she must not only see her perpetrator on a regular basis, but must be seen to be encouraging and supporting contact and relationships between her ex and her children - and also between herself and her abusive ex.

Trapped with your ex for at least 18 years

One of the most daunting prospects of this situation for many women, is the slow realisation that whilst they’ve escaped the direct relationship of abuse themselves, they will never truly escape their ex in totality.

And if he continues to use the children as a weapon, she will never completely leave the abuse, either.

That feeling of realising you are tethered to your abuser for decades to come is soul destroying.

Especially so, when you have been seriously abused, raped, traumatised, and tortured by an ex-partner.

If you run away with your children, you could be breaking a court order - and you could live in constant danger of being arrested, or having your children removed from you. But the alternative is facing your perpetrator every week, knowing how dangerous he truly is, whilst having to put on a brave face and ‘be the bigger person’.

No wonder it is so utterly exhausting and demoralising for so many women.

Unfortunately, like the woman who wrote to me, and many other women, I have my own experience of this.

Even though the father of my baby was on bail for rape and 12 other charges, I was told I must be seen to be cooperating with contact. He had denied all charges and we were awaiting the trial.

I had to give my months-old baby to my rapist twice per week, despite the fact that he was very rarely at home, rarely turned up, was often drunk, and had absolutely no interest in the baby.

I remember picking my baby up from him on one occasion when he was there, and as I put my baby in the pram, the father leant over to me and whispered that he admitted all charges, and that he enjoyed beating and raping me every time he did it. He stepped back, grinned at me, and waved a sickly wave at our baby like nothing had ever happened.

I looked him in the eye, took a deep breath, turned around, and pushed the pram away, my whole body shaking, tears streaming down my face.

I knew I couldn’t retaliate or cause a scene, because it could be used against me. I knew he was goading me.

I know what it is like to try to coparent with an abuser. It’s like living in a nightmare. Not only do you have to endure it, but you have to pretend to your children that their father is a great guy.

Being made to get along with, support, and celebrate your abusive ex is a twisted form of gaslighting for so many women in this position. No matter what their ex says about them, or does to them, the scrutiny and expectation remains on the mother to support the contact, and to say polite, kind things about the father at all times.

I have struggled with this myself, too.

What positive things do you say to a child about a rapist? Or a wife beater?

Do you just lie? Tell them some made up, romanticised stories about their father?

Do you lie every time they are too drunk to pick the kids up? Do you tell them that Daddy is busy, or had an emergency and he loves them very much?

And where did the safeguarding of the child go during this expectation?

I can’t think of another time when an adult would be expected to encourage a child to love and respect a rapist, abuser, or convicted violent criminal.

Instead, we encourage children to tell someone if they think an adult is unsafe, and we often warn children of the dangers of perpetrators and unsafe adults.

But in this specific and peculiar situation, women are told they must never talk negatively about their abusive, violent ex - in case it is reported as parental alienation, or abusing the children by ‘bad mouthing the father’.

This meant I spent many years conflicted when I was much younger. Did I tell my child the truth about his father’s convictions and actions? Would that make me a bad parent? Would I be ‘bad mouthing the father’? Would I harm my child like all the books said?

Would my child be safer knowing, or not knowing?

Could I be punished or prosecuted for telling my child the truth? If so, why?

These are questions women have asked themselves many times.

Especially when they have been directly told by solicitors or social workers not to tell the children anything negative about their father, no matter what he has done to them all.

This strikes me as gaslighting not only the Mum, but also the children. Many children witnessed their father abusing their mother, and were there when he beat her, insulted her or humiliated her. It is then terrifying to think that Mum is court-ordered to be nice, not to bring up all the things he did, to speak positively of Dad at all times, and to encourage the kids to have a relationship with him.

I wonder what this teaches the children?

If all of this complexity isn’t enough, many abusers have absolutely no interest in their children, being a better person, or being an active father.

In fact, many women find themselves in a faux custody battle, in which they know the father has no real interest in the kids, but does want to use the court process (or the kids themselves) as a control tactic.

Co-parenting with someone who is enjoying the control, deliberately disagreeing with parenting decisions, changing plans at short notice, undermining your parenting, encouraging bad behaviours in the children or actively manipulating and blackmailing you using the well-being or safety of your children is yet another terrifying form of post-separation abuse.

Again, in any other situation, we would not encourage children to be around an adult who used them to manipulate or harm others. And yet, when it comes to coparenting, women are expected to ‘be the bigger person’ (oh look, that again), and continue supporting positive contact with a man who is using contact with the children to abuse his ex partner.

What Would Jess Say?

I have endless respect and empathy for the women trying to navigate and endure this form of abuse.

In my opinion, being forced to co-parent with an abuser is abuse, too.

It’s a harsh reality that many women are split from, but still being expected to co-parent with, the men who beat them up, raped them, controlled and terrified them.

It makes no sense to let people like that be parents and guardians of our next generation anyway, but our system is such that we not only allow it, but we put a burden on women to encourage their children to love and respect those violent men.

It’s totally normal to completely and utterly resent and despise this process. I also think it’s normal to frequently question yourself, and wonder whether you are doing the best for your children, especially when you know it feels so wrong to be encouraging your children to look up to a violent abuser.

I think one of the things I learned was that if you are forced to give your abuser access to your children, the children are likely to be abused by him themselves, or they are likely to start admiring and copying him. I’ve known plenty of women in both situations, dealing with either the abuse of their children by a man they warned the court about, or their children beginning to copy abusive and misogynistic behaviours from Dad (who is being held as a positive influence).

That has to be some of the darkest and hardest times for women in these situations. Especially for those women whose children become abusive towards them because they mirror Dad’s behaviours and attitudes towards their Mum.

It’s pretty bleak. It doesn’t feel much has changed since I was in this situation many years ago.

I hope for change. There is growing activism around the family court system, and the trauma of coparenting with a perpetrator. More and more women are finding projects such as #TheCourtSaid.

Claire Waxman, Victims Commissioner, has repeatedly called out the failure of the family court system, and the way women will be controlled and abused by men using processes and hearings about their children.

In 2020, she gave a statement to the press following the publication of the Family Courts report:

"The pro-contact culture has driven much of the harm we see being done in family court decisions and we cannot wait for the further review on the presumption of parental involvement when we know too many lives are at risk of serious harm now. Crucially, the courts should not allow parental responsibility or contact with the perpetrator when they have a conviction, are subject to a restraining order, or where it's been proven that they pose a serious risk of harm to that individual and the child.”

I remember reading that and sighing with relief that we had a woman in a position of authority who truly understood, and was willing to speak out about how ‘contact at all costs’ - really is at all costs.