Parental rights ?

TBagpuss

I would guess that before he was charged, Step-dad was on bail and probably had bail conditions forbidding him to have contact with your son (on the basis your son was both the victim and a witness)
Presumably he no longer has those bail conditions and therefore there is no legal bar to his having contact.

The general rukle is that parents are assumed to be able to care for their children and to make decisions about who they come into contact with, so while step-dad has no rights over your son, during any period that you son is with his Mum, it is up to her where she takes him and who else he comes into contact with.

If a court order is made, this can impose conditions so it would be possible for a child arrangements order to include a specific provision that Mum must not allow step-dad contact with your son, or that he must not be left alone with him.

In the absence of any agreement, it would be up to the Judge to decide what restrictions or conditions were reasonable.

If you are currently arranging contact informally then you can try to agree with Mum that contact won't include her partner/husband.

Does she have friends or relatives near your home, so she could stay there and see your son in his local area rather than going back to her own home with him? As you referred to step-dad I am assuming that she lives with this man so it's unlikely to be practical to try to exclude Step-dad from their joint home to allow for contact, so you may need to think about other ways he can spend time with his mum without necessarily spending time in the house with Step-dad.

A court would have to try to balance the risk to your son of further aggression and the risk to him emotionally of losing the relationship with his mum, so would probably look at ways in which a relationship can be maintained.

Has his mum made any suggestions or asked for additional contact?

j.e.j.

valleyboy22 wrote: »

My son now has been lives with me for 3 months and his mother seems to want very little contact with him because she is on her boyfriends side(his step dad) which i find totally wrong.

Not unusual, unfortunately. Is she saying the step-dad smacked him because he was being naughty (ie he was disciplining him)?

I don't know what the current laws are with regard to disciplining children but if the step-dad's been had up for common assault and battery it sounds like there was more to it than a smacked bum for behaving badly or whatever.

valleyboy22

My son says he not bothered bout seeing his mum because what has happened and he feels that his mother did not really support him for what happened. The police found that this was not the first incident and I only found out more about all the other things when his statement was done. I was shocked that what has been going on my son did not mention anything to me. We been advised by the police officer involved in the case any contact should be supervised and that includes phone called which his mother has be very rarely doing and since step dad been charged no contact from her what so ever? ? His mother has no friends or family here in Wales so that will be a problem for her and I would not trust her because she will still try for some mad reason invite the step dad because she see that he done nothing wrong? Child arrangement order I'm looking into but like I said I can get help towards the cost if the social worker involved in the case categorise my son under one of the four section but still waiting on a e mail reply from my solicitor for that.

FatVonD

Would you be prepared to let her visit him in your house and you stay locally somewhere else if it meant he could see his mum?

Good luck, btw, I hope it all works out for you

PS Has your son mentioned whether his half siblings have been subjected to physical abuse? If they have/are being then you should report that to Social Services also.

valleyboy22

To be honest I'm a bit gutted that his own mother would put her boyfriend first rather than her son. I have no issue with her visiting him because I think his mother is important in his life but needs to priority him not the person who done this to him. In regards to the social services well I feel that they don't seem to be doing a great job to be honest.