Father granted unsupervised contact with his son

A father has won the right to have unsupervised contact with his son even though he had abducted the child in the past.

The court was impressed by the restraint he had shown in the intervening period and his willingness to seek therapy.

The difficulties began after the father abducted his son and took him to Tunisia. This traumatised the mother who had to spend nine days in Tunisia finding her son and arranging to bring him back. The mother then continued living in Britain while the father lived in France.

Eighteen months after the abduction, the father started coming to the UK every month to have supervised contact with his son. He applied for unsupervised contact but agreed not to pursue the application so that he and the mother could consider unsupervised contact while he undertook therapy.

The father wanted someone from the contact centre to accompany him and his son so they could go out together but this proved impracticable. He therefore had to go back to the court to pursue his application for unsupervised contact.

As always in such cases, the court put the interests of the child first. It decided that the boy's needs were not best served by having contact with his father restricted to the centre. It also took into account the restraint shown by the father in not pursuing his application until he had no other choice.

The court decided that he should be granted unsupervised contact but should be obliged to surrender his passport while doing so. This would reassure the mother that he could not leave the country with her son. It was too early to consider unsupervised contact outside the UK but that should be seen as a long term aim if everything progressed well.