No Contact Where Child Upset by Mother’s Distress

Re K (Contact: Mother’s Anxiety) (FD [1999] 2 FLR 703)

Two contact sessions had taken place with the father who had behaved immaculately and established an immediate and lasting rapport with his son, whom he had previously violently kidnapped for which he had served a sentence of eight months’ imprisonment. However, the contact caused the mother considerable distress which itself upset the boy to such an extent that the court accepted the advice of a consultant psychologist that direct contact should cease and be replaced with indirect contact. The rejection of direct contact was not based on the mother’s anxiety but on the distress that it caused to the boy.