© 2026 Jessica Susan Hill / JSH Law. All rights reserved.When Domestic Abuse Becomes Normal: Why a Child’s Wish for Contact Cannot Be Read in Isolation
A child can love an abusive parent, miss them and want contact with them. That does not, by itself, establish that contact is emotionally safe. Re C [2026] EWCA Civ 1216 exposes the difficult safeguarding question of how courts should understand children’s wishes when domestic abuse has shaped their understanding of family life.
JSH Law | Family Justice & Safeguarding Analysis
Re C [2026] EWCA Civ 1216 exposes one of the hardest questions in private children proceedings: what does it really mean when a child who has lived with domestic abuse still wants a relationship with the parent responsible for it?
Last reviewed: 6 October 2026 | Jurisdiction: England and Wales
The quick answer
A child’s wishes and feelings matter. They matter enormously. But they are not a referendum on safeguarding. Where domestic abuse has shaped family life, the court must consider not only what the child says, but the context in which those wishes developed: what the child has experienced, what they may have learned to regard as normal, their emotional needs, the risk of future harm and the effect of the abusive behaviour on their relationships with both parents.
A child can love a parent who has harmed them. A child can miss that parent. A child can ask to see them.
None of those things, standing alone, establishes that contact is emotionally or physically safe.
That is one of the most important safeguarding issues raised by Re C (Child Arrangements Orders; Domestic Abuse; Child Focused Court) [2026] EWCA Civ 1216 , a Court of Appeal judgment handed down on 29 September 2026.
The judgment has attracted attention because the father had an admitted history of domestic abuse and other concerning behaviour, yet the court permitted limited direct contact to continue under supervision by family friends rather than restricting contact to letters or other indirect communication.
But the judgment contains a more fundamental safeguarding point.
Sir Stephen Cobb, President of the Family Division, recognised that the father’s abusive behaviour had shaped the children’s experiences and perceptions. In discussing one child’s comments, the judgment referred to the extent to which:
“domestic abuse had become normalised within the children’s understanding of family life.”
That sentence deserves serious attention.
It goes directly to a problem that arises repeatedly in domestic-abuse cases: how do we hear a child without mistaking adaptation to abuse for evidence that the abuse has caused no harm?
What happened in Re C?
Re C concerned four children whose parents separated in 2023.
The father had admitted a number of abusive behaviours, including controlling behaviour towards the mother, socially isolating her, smacking the children and ill-treating the youngest child on one occasion. He had also accepted that his behaviour had directly and indirectly affected the children.
A psychological assessment recorded traits associated with antisocial personality disorder, including aggressiveness, irresponsibility and lack of remorse, together with narcissistic personality traits.
There were also significant concerns about the father’s behaviour following separation.
Among other matters, the judgment records an incident in which the mother removed the eldest child’s mobile phone because of concerns about inappropriate internet use. The father subsequently obtained another phone for the child and arranged an account from which its costs could be paid. There was also significant disagreement about the child’s ADHD diagnosis and medication, eventually requiring judicial determination.
The Family Court ultimately ordered that the children live with their mother but spend limited direct time with their father. Contact was ordered for five hours every other Saturday during term time, with additional arrangements during school holidays, supervised by named family friends of the father who were to be briefed about the risks.
The mother appealed.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the challenge to the contact arrangements but allowed her appeal against the section 91(14) restriction that had also been imposed upon her.
Re C should not be read as authority for the proposition that domestic abuse stops mattering when a child wants contact. The judgment instead illustrates how difficult the welfare analysis can become when attachment, wishes, established abuse and future risk all exist at the same time.
The Court of Appeal considered the children’s wishes within the wider history of the family and the effect that domestic abuse had had upon their experiences and perceptions.
That distinction is critical.
What does it mean when domestic abuse becomes “normalised”?
Children do not enter family proceedings with an objective outsider’s understanding of what family relationships are supposed to look like.
Their benchmark for “normal” is built, at least in part, from what they have lived.
If intimidation, control, denigration, surveillance, undermining, unpredictable anger or fear has repeatedly formed part of family life, a child may not necessarily label those experiences as abuse.
They may simply experience them as family.
Normalisation does not mean that the child approves of abuse. It means behaviour may have become sufficiently familiar that the child has adapted to it, accommodated it or incorporated it into their expectations of relationships.
A child who says things such as:
- “Dad always gets angry like that.”
- “Mum just needs not to upset him.”
- “That’s just what he’s like.”
- “I know not to tell him certain things.”
- “It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
may not be demonstrating an absence of harm.
Statements of that kind may require careful exploration because they can reveal how the child has organised their own behaviour around the reactions, expectations or behaviour of an adult.
The same is true where the child still wants a relationship with that parent.
Attachment does not disappear simply because a parent behaves abusively. Nor should a child be expected to reject a parent before the effect of domestic abuse upon them is taken seriously.
Children’s wishes are important — but they are not determinative
Section 1 of the Children Act 1989 makes the child’s welfare the court’s paramount consideration when determining questions relating to the child’s upbringing.
The welfare checklist requires the court to consider the child’s ascertainable wishes and feelings, considered in the light of their age and understanding.
But wishes and feelings are one part of the welfare assessment, not the whole of it.
The court must also consider matters including:
- the child’s physical, emotional and educational needs;
- the likely effect of any change in circumstances;
- the child’s age, background and relevant characteristics;
- harm the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering; and
- the capability of each parent, and any other relevant person, to meet the child’s needs.
The law therefore does not ask only:
“Does the child want contact?”
The welfare question is much wider:
What do this child’s wishes mean when examined alongside their experiences, relationships, vulnerabilities, understanding, history of harm and future safety?
That is a safeguarding analysis.
It is fundamentally different from simply recording a child’s answer.
Hearing a child is not the same as taking every statement at face value
There is an important balance here.
The answer to normalisation is not to dismiss children’s voices. Children should not be treated as unreliable simply because domestic abuse has occurred. Nor should an adult automatically be permitted to reinterpret every statement by a child that does not fit that adult’s case.
That would create a different safeguarding problem.
Instead, the child’s voice needs to be both heard and understood.
Cafcass’s Child Impact Assessment Framework (CIAF) is designed to help Family Court Advisers understand what is happening for the individual child, assess harm and future risk, gather information and critically analyse what the child’s experiences mean for their welfare.
Cafcass’s domestic-abuse resources similarly emphasise that assessments should focus on the impact of domestic abuse upon the child, informed by the available information, relevant risk factors and reasoned professional judgment.
A child’s voice is evidence. It is not, by itself, the risk assessment.
A child can simultaneously:
- love a parent;
- want to see that parent;
- be frightened of particular behaviours;
- minimise what has happened;
- feel responsible for keeping adults calm;
- worry about upsetting one or both parents; and
- have been emotionally harmed by the family dynamic.
Those experiences are not mutually exclusive.
What PD12J actually requires
Practice Direction 12J is central to private children proceedings in which domestic abuse is alleged, admitted or otherwise established.
Its starting point is clear: domestic abuse is harmful to children and can place them at risk of physical, psychological and emotional harm, including where the abusive behaviour is directed towards a parent rather than directly towards the child.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 reinforces this approach. A child who sees or hears domestic abuse, or experiences its effects, and is related to the victim or perpetrator is recognised as a victim of domestic abuse for the purposes of the Act.
Once domestic abuse has been admitted, found or otherwise established, PD12J requires the welfare checklist to be applied with reference to that abuse and any relevant risk assessment.
The court should consider matters including:
- the harm already suffered by the child and the parent with whom the child lives;
- the harm they may be at risk of suffering if a child arrangements order is made;
- the effect of the domestic abuse on the child and on the child’s relationship with each parent;
- the likely behaviour of the abusive parent during contact;
- the effect that behaviour may have on the child;
- whether the parents appreciate the effect of past abuse and the potential for future abuse; and
- whether the child’s and resident parent’s physical and emotional safety can, as far as possible, be secured before, during and after contact.
Where domestic abuse has been established, contact is not simply a question of whether the child wants it. The court must determine whether contact is beneficial and whether the identified risks can safely be managed.
PD12J also requires the court to explain how the findings of domestic abuse have influenced its decision. Where contact with a perpetrator is nevertheless ordered, the court must explain why the order will not expose the child to a risk of harm and why contact is considered beneficial.
That is why the context surrounding a child’s wishes and feelings matters so much. A court cannot properly assess the effect of domestic abuse on the child’s relationship with a parent while treating the child’s expressed wishes as though they developed in a vacuum.
The difficult tension inside Re C
This is where Re C becomes particularly important.
The children had expressed a wish to see their father. But the Court of Appeal did not analyse those wishes independently of what the children had experienced.
The judgment recognised that the father’s abusive behaviour had influenced their experiences, perceptions and understanding of family life.
One child reportedly wanted her parents to live on the same island — but sufficiently far apart that they would not see one another.
That observation captures the complexity of the case. A child may express a genuine wish to preserve a relationship with a parent while simultaneously describing a family structure that keeps the parents safely apart.
The crucial distinction
Wanting a relationship with a parent is not necessarily evidence that the child’s experience of that relationship is healthy.
Equally, evidence of domestic abuse does not automatically determine that all direct contact must cease. The court must undertake an individual welfare and risk analysis. Re C demonstrates the difficulty of that exercise rather than supplying an automatic answer.
The Court of Appeal ultimately concluded that the trial judge had been entitled to make the limited supervised-contact order.
That conclusion matters. But so does the reasoning that preceded it.
The appellate court did not adopt the proposition:
“The children want contact, therefore contact is safe.”
The children’s wishes existed within a family system that the court recognised had been affected by domestic abuse.
That may be one of the most important practical lessons from the judgment.
And what about supervision?
Re C has also attracted attention because the direct contact ordered was supervised by family friends rather than professional supervisors.
Paragraph 38 of PD12J requires the court, where direct contact following domestic abuse is nevertheless considered safe and beneficial, to consider whether supervision is required and, if so, where and by whom the supervision should take place.
PD12J contains an additional safeguard: where a risk assessment has concluded that a parent poses a risk to the child or the other parent, contact through a supported contact centre, or contact supervised by a parent or relative, is not appropriate.
That wording should be applied carefully. It does not create a simple rule that every case involving domestic abuse automatically requires professional supervision. The precise findings, risk assessment and protective arrangements in the individual case remain important.
But supervision must be more than a label.
Questions that matter include:
- Who is the proposed supervisor?
- Do they understand the domestic-abuse findings and identified risks?
- Can they recognise behaviour that breaches boundaries or places the child under emotional pressure?
- Will they intervene if necessary?
- Are they sufficiently independent to challenge the parent they are supervising?
- How will concerns be recorded or reported?
- What happens if the arrangement breaks down?
A person being physically present during contact is not necessarily the same thing as effective safeguarding. The protective arrangement must address the risks actually identified in the case.
What this means for Cafcass, Cafcass Cymru and section 7 assessments
The implications extend beyond judges.
Where domestic abuse is relevant, a welfare assessment must do more than record:
“The child said they want to see Dad.”
or:
“The child says they feel safe.”
Those statements may be highly important, but the analysis cannot properly end there.
The assessment should explore what life has actually been like for the child and what the available evidence means for that individual child’s welfare.
Questions may include:
- What has this child witnessed, heard or experienced?
- What behaviour have they learned to regard as ordinary?
- How does the child describe each parent’s behaviour?
- Does the child modify their behaviour to manage an adult’s reactions?
- What happens when the child disagrees with that parent?
- Can the child express both positive and negative feelings about each parent?
- Are accounts consistent across time, settings and professionals?
- What do school, health, social-care, police or other records show?
- Has the child’s presentation changed following the commencement, suspension or alteration of contact?
- How does the identified domestic abuse affect the child’s emotional security and relationships?
Those questions are not designed to manufacture a particular answer.
They are designed to make the child’s voice meaningful.
There is a significant difference between recording what a child says and understanding what that child’s words mean in the context of their lived experience.
Normalisation, coercive control and allegations of “alienation”
This issue becomes particularly sensitive where a child either wants contact with a parent whose behaviour has been alleged or found to be abusive, or refuses contact with another parent.
The court must avoid simplistic assumptions in either direction.
A child’s expressed view may be genuinely their own. It may also have been shaped by their experiences, fears, attachments, loyalties, family dynamics or the behaviour of adults around them.
Different dynamics may co-exist.
Cafcass’s Child Impact Assessment Framework includes separate resources dealing with domestic abuse, harmful parental conflict and behaviour associated with a child’s reluctance, resistance or refusal to spend time with a parent. That structure itself illustrates the need for careful differential assessment rather than assumptions based on a label.
The correct approach is therefore neither:
“The child said it, so it must be accepted without analysis.”
nor:
“The child said it, so somebody else must have put it in their head.”
Both are shortcuts.
Safeguarding requires examination of the evidence, the child’s lived experience, the history of the family and the risk of future harm.
For litigants in person: evidence the pattern, not the theory
If you believe domestic abuse has become normalised within your child’s experience, simply telling the court:
“My child has been conditioned.”
or:
“They have normalised the abuse.”
is unlikely to be enough.
Those are conclusions. The court needs the underlying evidence.
A more effective approach is to identify the facts and chronology:
- What behaviour occurred?
- When did it occur?
- Was it admitted, found by the court or independently recorded?
- What did the child actually see, hear or experience?
- What did the child say contemporaneously?
- Did the child’s behaviour, presentation or functioning change?
- What do school, GP, police, social-care, Cafcass or other professional records show?
- Did anything change when contact arrangements changed?
- Were parenting boundaries repeatedly undermined?
- Were materially different accounts given to different professionals?
Do not coach the child
Do not repeatedly question a child, ask them to gather evidence, tell them what they should say to Cafcass or pressure them to identify behaviour as abusive. That can harm the child and may also undermine the reliability of the evidence. Preserve genuine, contemporaneous material and allow appropriately trained professionals to explore the child’s experience.
Chronology often matters more than adjectives.
Instead of writing:
“The father is manipulative and the child has normalised his coercive control.”
the evidence may be more useful when set out as:
“On 12 March, the child said X. On 18 March, the school recorded Y. On 22 March, the father sent the attached message. On 4 April, contact changed. The school subsequently recorded Z.”
That allows Cafcass, Cafcass Cymru and the court to assess the pattern rather than being asked simply to accept one parent’s interpretation of it.
The JSH Law Six-Question Check: testing a child’s expressed wishes in an abuse case
When a child’s wishes are being relied upon in proceedings involving domestic abuse, it can help to work through six disciplined questions.
Record their words accurately. Separate what the child has said from what adults believe those words mean.
Consider domestic abuse, coercive control, harmful conflict, disrupted relationships, previous contact arrangements and the wider family history.
Look for findings, admissions, messages, professional records, reports, school information, medical material and other contemporaneous evidence.
Consider whether the family history may have shaped expectations, loyalties, fears, coping strategies, emotional responses or perceptions of what is ordinary.
Analyse physical safety, emotional safety, the risk of further harm and the effect on the child’s wider care environment.
Consider whether contact should be direct, indirect, supervised, professionally supervised, conditional, reviewed or, where justified by the evidence, temporarily paused while risk is assessed.
This approach does not silence the child. It is intended to help place the child’s voice within the evidence and safeguarding context needed to understand it properly.
What this means in practice
Re C should not be reduced to the headline “an abusive father was allowed contact”. Nor should it be presented as authority for the proposition that children’s wishes override domestic abuse.
The judgment is considerably more nuanced.
Its wider significance lies in the recognition that a child’s expressed wishes can exist within — and be shaped by — a family environment affected by domestic abuse.
Domestic abuse can alter a child’s understanding of relationships. It can affect what they tolerate, what they expect, what they believe they have to manage and how they understand safety.
And it can exist alongside genuine love and attachment.
A child does not have to reject an abusive parent before the abuse can be understood as harmful.
The child’s wishes matter. The child’s relationships matter. But so does the context in which those wishes and relationships developed.
Where domestic abuse has been admitted, proved or otherwise established, the law already provides a framework for carrying out that analysis.
The challenge is ensuring that framework is applied rigorously enough to distinguish between hearing a child’s voice and mistaking adaptation to harm for evidence of safety.
That distinction can determine the future course of a child’s relationships, safety and emotional wellbeing.
Read the full Re C case analysis
This article focuses specifically on children’s wishes, normalisation of domestic abuse and safeguarding.
For the wider analysis of the Court of Appeal judgment, the Child Focused Court model, PD12J and the procedural implications of Re C [2026] EWCA Civ 1216, read:
Need help making the evidence make sense?
Family court cases involving domestic abuse, coercive control and children’s wishes can quickly become buried beneath years of messages, reports, orders and conflicting accounts.
JSH Law provides practical, evidence-led support for litigants in person in family proceedings in England and Wales.
Support can include organising evidence, preparing chronologies and schedules, reviewing Cafcass or Cafcass Cymru material, drafting position statements and witness statements, preparing hearing documents and identifying the issues the court actually needs to determine.
Sources and legal framework
This article draws on the following primary legal and professional sources:
- Re C (Child Arrangements Orders; Domestic Abuse; Child Focused Court) [2026] EWCA Civ 1216 — Court of Appeal judgment, 29 September 2026.
- Children Act 1989, section 1 — paramountcy principle and welfare checklist.
- Domestic Abuse Act 2021, section 3 — children as victims of domestic abuse.
- Family Procedure Rules, Practice Direction 12J — child arrangements, domestic abuse and harm.
- Cafcass Child Impact Assessment Framework — framework for assessing children’s experiences, welfare, harm and future risk.
- Cafcass: Indicators of domestic abuse such as coercive control — professional resources for assessing the impact of domestic abuse upon children.
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