Frank Mullane
When I heard about Frank Mullane and what happened to his sister and his nephew I was shocked, I was shocked because it is a tragic and terrible story, I was shocked because it was preventable and was shocked because it mirrors the situation my family are in.
The circumstances are too similar for comfort, estranged violent partner, vulnerable Mother and innocent child mixed with police incompetence (Essex Police) and arrogance, mis-information, stone walls and all the ingredients needed to enable a violent man to act at will and without restraint.
Add in a healthy dose of deceit at Inspector level and an MP who has been too easily decieved and the coctail becomes rather more potent and volatile.
Before that terrible day Frank Mullane had many misconceptions about law and order, the police and the criminal justice system, I am in exactly the same position, reading his story I can see we are on a parallel in many ways. He is quoted as saying “The police, we are told, are here to protect us: when they make mistakes the facts will be laid bare and they will learn from them“, quite clearly they were not there for his family and his enlightenment came all too late.
I have read about Frank Mullone, I now am making myself enlightened and my family enlightened too as for the police are not there for us either, nor do they learn from their mistakes and worse they are more interested in covering them up rather than protecting the victims. I am learning about the system, all the anachronisms, who the bodies are, what the government initiative is, who is responsible and in what position, I will approach government people, police at ever higher levels, I am already talking to MAPPA, NACRO, the Probation service.
As for the police, they ponderously lope around making decisions that are based on their own agenda and NOT for the benefit of the victim, their decisions are based on ill-informed opinions, their intelligence and understanding of the situation is narrow and polluted by the need to protect their own aims.
This is the type of approach that leads them not to question the relocation of the violent man next to his victim in her new town, a location she fled to when trying to protect herself. Only when the abject abhorrence to such a concept by the victimes family threatens to publicise yet one more monumental and potentially cataclysmic mistake do they mobilise to another end conclusion. In fact at this point it is not clear the police didn’t influence this proposed relocation in the first place but I will get to the bottom of it.
This is the sort of situation that makes for those terrible headline stories, the stories of events that have blighted peoples lives for the rest of their lives and leaves innocent lives cut brutally short. The hard facts of a man who is seemingly protected against being accountable, with a system that hides this, of court cases falling through because no evidence is offered and no investigation is done, multiple incident numbers, non molestation orders breached without action, 999 calls unanswered, police chiefs misleading MP’s.
Nothing has changed Mr Mullone, there is a queue of terrible events poised, the situation will be replicated across this country, events are ready, just awaiting the final random set of circumstances to be drawn from the pool that is the home for them all.
As always there has to be one vital common denominator for these event, the events that are poised to become the headlines, no matter how incompetent the police, the CPS, the authorities, the tragedy must have the perpetrator at large, the violent person must be at liberty, that person is the kingpin, in our case the kingpin is a violent, drug taking, crime loving man who escapes justice perpetually.
In any other country he would not be at liberty and would be in jail for years and years and he would not be a risk, he is kept at large by a system that revolves around the police and the way they interpret their service to the public, the way they do not collect evidence and the way they present cases to the CPS which are doomed to failure.
I read the account of Frank Mullane and his family with huge sorrow and anquish but tomorrow there will be the right blend somewhere else and it will happen again, I am going to fight to stop it happening to my family.
Dear Mr Parker
After having read the piece you wrote about Frank Mullane we should like you to know of a letter we have sent to more than 8,000 individuals to raise awareness of what is happening to victims of domestic violence in this country:
It is 10 years since Re L, which should have ushered in a decade of hope for sufferers of domestic abuse and their children. This is what the family court guidelines state should happen in cases involving domestic violence:
“Domestic violence involves a very serious and significant failure in parenting – failure to protect the child’s carer and failure to protect the child emotionally (and in some cases physically – which meets any definition of child abuse).
Without the following we would see the balance of advantage and disadvantage as tipping against contact:
(a) some (preferably full) acknowledgment of the violence;
(b) some acceptance (preferably full if appropriate, i.e. the sole instigator of violence) of responsibility for that violence;
(c) full acceptance of the inappropriateness of the violence particularly in respect of the domestic and parenting context and of the likely ill-effects on the child;
(d) a genuine interest in the child’s welfare and full commitment to the child, i.e. a wish for contact in which he is not making the conditions;
(e) a wish to make reparation to the child and work towards the child recognising the inappropriateness of the violence and the attitude to and treatment of the mother and helping the child to develop appropriate values and attitudes;
(f) an expression of regret and the showing of some understanding of the impact of their behaviour on their ex-partner in the past and currently;
(g) indications that the parent seeking contact can reliably sustain contact in all senses.”
It was said that without (a)–(f) above they could not see how the non-resident parent could fully support the child and play a part in undoing the harm caused to the child and support the child’s current situation and need to move on and develop healthily. There would be a significant risk to the child’s general well-being and his emotional development ([2000] Fam Law 615, 624):
It was also said: “Without these we also see contact as potentially raising the likelihood of the most serious of the sequelae of children’s exposure, directly or indirectly, to domestic violence, namely the increased risk of aggression and violence in the child generally, the increased risk of the child becoming the perpetrator of domestic violence or becoming involved in domestically violent relationships and of increased risk of having disturbed inter-personal relationships themselves.”
None of this has happened. We the undersigned can state that in our cases the above criteria were not applied. A perpetrator is almost never asked to make reparation or change his behaviour and is virtually always given contact. We are not asking for new laws. We are asking for nothing more than that existing laws are applied. Re L, the beacon of hope, has been extinguished.
Currently the family courts are measuring DV by severity of injuries. It means that no matter how destroyed mentally women and children are by DV, unless you’ve got fractures to prove it, it doesn’t count. The destructive patterns of emotional/psychological, sexual and financial abuse, and the debilitating control and coercion which a perpetrator uses are barely understood by the family courts. We need a commitment that they will no longer minimise domestic abuse. Every case in which it is present in whatever form should qualify for a risk assessment and no unsupervised contact unless the perpetrator is successfully treated. Instead of the focus being on the mother’s ‘implacable hostility’ to contact, the onus should be on the abuser to convince the judge that he can be trusted with the children.
Why are double standards being applied by the judiciary in matters relating to the abuse of children? In many cases where a child has been abused or is likely to be, and parents are thereby misusing their rights and responsibilities to the child, the child would be placed in state care if the case was brought by social services. Yet using the same standard of evidence the family courts place children with their abusers. Police and social services advise women to get out of violent or abusive relationships or risk being blamed for allowing their children to be put at risk; but then the family courts are forcing mothers to hand the children over to the same abusive father via unsupervised contact.
We should like the Government to appoint a panel of reputable domestic violence specialists to be granted observer status in the family courts so that the way these cases are handled can be examined by relevant professionals. We also ask that DV specialists are fully involved in judicial training and the training of Cafcass and those involved in child protection since they currently lack proper knowledge and the tools to deal with domestic abuse. DV is only seen through the eyes of the judiciary and legal professionals at present. As survivors of domestic abuse, scared for our children’s safety, and in possession of greater knowledge and awareness of the effects on our children than the legal professionals are, we ask to be heard.
CHILDREN’S VOICES IN FAMILY LAW
http://childrensvoicesinfamilylaw1.community.officelive.com/aboutus.aspx
Group administrators:
Cristina Weds
Clare Scanlan
Hannah Fear
June Andrews
Faith Trueman
Julie Richards
Brooke Davies
Copies to: MPs, AMs, Councillors of England and Wales, Judiciary, solicitors’ offices, barristers’ chambers, police chiefs, social services,cafcass, churches, journalists
Thank you for this post
I will read the letter with interest, I hope my Frank Mullane post was respectful and in keeping with the views of people associated with Frank Mullane.
Shaun