‘She just took his boy away’

In the wake of a Government white paper which will make it harder for women to keep the father's name off a birth certificate, Julia Breen speaks to one family who are desperate to see their son and grandson.

JOHN stroked his fiancee's hair as she struggled with her labour pains. He was overwhelmed as he watched the tiny baby boy be scooped up, and wrapped up for warmth, little fingers and feet exposed.

Mother and baby were fine. John rang his parents and sister, his voice bursting with happiness. "I'm a father," he cried down the phone. "You are grandparents."

That was just over a year ago. It's Father's Day on Sunday. But John, from Bishop Auckland, won't be getting a card from his son. In fact, he's pretty convinced his son doesn't know he exists.

After the birth, his fiancee went back to live at her parents' house, with no particular explanation. They had never approved of the match with John due to religious reasons.

His fiancee became more and more detached. In one, final phone call she informed him she had registered the birth of their baby without putting his name on the birth certificate. She then moved out of the area, her parents refusing to tell John where.

John has lost his son. His parents have lost their only, beloved grandson. His sister has lost her nephew. All denied access to the boy who will now be just over one, learning to walk and talk, blissfully ignorant of the father and wider family who have so much love to give.

Because he is not on the birth certificate, John has no right to see his son, or make any decisions about his welfare. To gain the right of parental responsibility, which he would have if he was on the birth certificate, he will have to go through the courts.

John is now seeking legal advice, his patience worn out, desperate to know his son.

He isn't confrontational, not the type to go scaling Tower Bridge in a Batman costume, but he is heartbroken at being separated from his son.

John's mother, Wendy, says: "John is a very quiet boy, he is very caring. It is so sad it has come to this.

He used to go through all the time to see his son after he was born, but his fiancee's parents were always there, never left them alone together as a family.

There were always excuses why we couldn't see him.

"The last time I went they said I couldn't come in because they claimed they couldn't get the front door open. I only got in because I stopped there until they had opened it."

John's sister, Katherine, says: "We wondered if she had gone to her parents because she had postnatal depression, and if that was why she was behaving strangely.

"They had initially gone to register the birth together.

My brother had made an appointment but when they got there she changed her mind. Then we found had she had gone back and not even put his name down - which she could do because they weren't married."

Being separated from the baby has taken its toll on all the family. Katherine says: "My mam is absolutely devastated. She has admitted herself, it is like she is grieving for a death. He is her only grandchild and she can't see him. She took my brother's fiancee in as one of her own and she spent hours talking to her, helping her.

"We never ever thought she could do such a thing.

We were so looking forward to all the Christmases and other special times with the baby.

"For a while my brother thought his partner would come back. I know it is on his mind all the time. He gets on with his life, goes to work, and tries to be normal, but I know how much it must be hurt ing him. He's lost his partner and his son."

THE Government introduced a white paper last week which outlines proposals to encourage mothers to name their child's father on birth certificates for the first time.

The 45,000 mothers who leave the father's name blank when registering a birth each year will have to identify him unless they can prove it is "impossible, impractical or unreasonable" to do so.

Once a name is given, the father will be contacted and ordered to register, or submit to a paternity test.

If the test comes back positive his name will be included on the records. Men who object to being left off the birth certificate of a child they believe to be theirs will be allowed to demand a DNA test.

Nick Barnard, of the organisation Families Need Fathers, says: "Married men automatically get parental responsibility on their child's birth certificate. In the past that wasn't such a problem, but with more and more unmarried couples having children, the law needed to be updated.

"One of the biggest issues we see facing fathers is bias in the family courts. It is not always a bias towards women, but towards the resident parent. Another is parental alienation. It is basically parents turning children against another parent to the point where a child, even when there has been no problem, the child will refuse to see their non-resident parent.

"This is exacerbated by delays in the family courts, where the resident parent has all the time in the world to say what they like about the other parent."

A recent case, which had been in and out of family courts for 12 years, concerned a 14-year-old girl who refused to see her father because her mother falsely claimed he had abused her.

Senior judge Lord Justice Ward told the father that legally there was nothing he could do to help him reestablish contact with his daughter who had been turned against him by her "vicious" mother.

He said the "drip, drip, drip of venom" poured into the daughter's ears by the mother had succeeded in turning her against her innocent father.

Lord Justice Ward told the father that the case was bordering on scandalous - but said the court had to act in the best interests of the child, who would have been too distressed to spend time with the father after the mother's "corrupting" campaign.

Up to 20,000 couples go to court over access disputes each year. Mr Barnard says courts are not good enough at taking action if contact orders are flouted by the resident parent.

■ Names have been changed