Judge finds evidence of child that mother denied existed

In a very unusual case a High Court judge has found evidence of a child that the mother denied existed. (Note that for the sake of simplicity we will refer to the parties by the terms ‘father’ and ‘mother’.)

The case concerned a father’s application for contact with what he claimed were his twin sons, who he said were born in February 2021.

The mother denied that she was ever pregnant, and said that no twins were ever born. She maintained that the father knew that the twins were not born and that he had pursued her as a continuing act of controlling and coercive behaviour.

It fell to Mrs Justice Arbuthnot to decide whether the children, or at least one of them, did indeed exist.

The background to the case was that the parties met on the internet in 2015, and started a relationship. They had an Islamic marriage in 2019. They moved in with the father’s parents, but the relationship broke down shortly afterwards.

The parties got back together again for some months in 2020, before the mother left the father again. The father said that on a day in February 2021 the mother gave birth to twin boys.

Searches of the birth register found no traces of the children.

However, the father produced a considerable amount of evidence in support of his case, including recordings of conversations where the mother and various witnesses had spoken to him about the children, WhatsApp messages and photographs from his telephone of one child and sometimes two which he said the mother had sent him, and pregnancy ultrasound scans and other documents relating to the babies.

The mother accepted that she had told the father she was pregnant and sent him scans of the babies, but said that she had lied, and that the scans were forged.

There was also evidence from a hospital that the mother had been contacting the hospital, trying to find out if her records at the hospital would be safe from disclosure.

But perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence came from a psychotherapist and counsellor, who told the court that she saw that the mother was pregnant on 1st December 2020, that she saw a child with the mother in the car in July 2021 and that the mother and a child came to see her at home on 11th February 2024.

In all of the circumstances Mrs Justice Arbuthnot found that there was strong evidence there was a pregnancy and there was some evidence that at least one child was born.

The case is to be listed for further directions, in due course.

You can read the full report of the judgment here.

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