To mark this event we will be sharing stories from our clients and our staff will be taking part in activities in and out of work to raise awareness. Here is the first story…..

I am an alienated mum, also a survivor of an abusive relationship. No, I was not black and blue, I was destroyed emotionally, mentally, and financially by ex-partner, who controlled my life, cut me off my friends and family, stole from me, manipulated, twisted everything, and blamed me for everything that happened. I lost my confidence, my self esteem was non-existent, I lost a lot of weight due to abuse and stress. I found a strength to escape this toxic relationship, but his coercive behaviour never stopped as we had a child together. I have tried to co-parent with him, was compromising a lot, and still taking a lot of abuse. I have learnt not to give him any reaction. In 2021 he turned our son against me,  breached court order by not returning him to me, changed his school without my consent ( son used to go to a very good school ,and now he goes to one of the worst and lives in the most  deprived area of Cardiff), didn’t tell me about his emergency operation under GA until the day after, and still wouldn’t  let me see him during recovery, also managed to put a blame on me for this operation. My son’s phone number got changed twice to make sure I had no way of contacting him.  

Court proceedings (number 3) were dreadful, tiring emotionally and physically, and very costly. Nobody knows anything about parental alienation in UK, nobody cares about it. I was told to attend ‘parental programme’ to improve my parenting skills, and to understand how to manage teenagers. I was made to feel like a useless parent by my son’s mentor and then CAFCASS officer during pre-court findings. CAFCASS officer was unpleasant, cold, biased, and very clear on telling me what was right for my son, and it was to detach him from me, and to place him with his father. Nobody wanted to hear about how abusive his father was to me and Aleks in the past, that he was a drug addict and kept cannabis at his house. CAFCASS officer put in a report that ‘as long as there is another adult at home to look after children when my son’s father is smoking and is intoxicated, and as long as he was not smoking around children it was acceptable’.  I got help from Cardiff Women’s Aid and even paid my local MP a visit to help out with social services, who were not interested in my son’s case. Now I am getting support from Vale Domestic Abuse Services in the Vale and am very grateful for it.

In all this I stayed very calm and sane. I kept my full-time job, never taken a day off. My friends and family, work, and music got me through it. Love for my son was giving me hope.

I know there are many mums like me out there, who do not know how to cope, what to do, where to seek help. I would like to tell my story. It might seem ordinary, but it is real and true. It might give ordinary people a piece of extraordinary courage. I would like to highlight an arising issue of Parental Alienation, that is ignored by many professionals, and is an existing problem, and a growing one. There is a lot of ignorance in today’s world, and many professionals doing their jobs for a wrong reason. And it is only because it is not their children.

I have knocked so many doors in 2 years, and some got opened, some got shut.  There is not enough awareness, and not much is done about coercive behaviour. It impacts way too many people, including innocent children, who suffer the most. I would like to see a change one day, and hopefully one day soon.