The Push Chapter 8

Episode Eight: The Push

She stood up in front of a judge  and told him what was best for her children. She wasn't a lawyer. This was her life.

Clive has been released from prison. He is riding his bike along Kings Lane. Vanessa is documenting every sighting, every date, every time.

Episode Eight follows Vanessa to a legal conference where she speaks in front of judges and academics — and a welfare officer who has already made up her mind.

Four voices this episode:

The story of watching, waiting, and refusing to be passive.

The law on research, campaigns, and the slow shift toward recognising coercive control.

Vanessa's reflection on composure as a strategy — and what it costs.

The stage — strategic, and the discovery that your voice matters beyond your own case.

Composed is not the same as unafraid. Composure is a strategy. It does not mean you are not frightened.

#ImplacablyHostile #DomesticAbuse #SurvivorStories #CoerciveControl #FamilyCourt #MothersRights #YouAreNotAlone #DomesticViolence #WomensPodcast #TrueCrime #HealingJourney #CoerciveControl #Podcast #NewPodcast

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:21

Hi, so I think I'm getting a bit braver about talking into this now and saying hello. It's never going to be perfect, but I'm nearly coming to the end of this is chapter eight now, so I'm just going to put that up. This is all about the sort of campaigning thing that I did for a long time. There's lots of bits in here that isn't in here. Like the fact that I actually ended up doing training for Women's Aid. I started training the police as well at one point, I can remember. I didn't get paid for it, but I remember doing it. And this was all during all this time when all this court case was going on. I was also working, and I can remember distinctly one one day at work where there was a trade union rep arguing with the manager, and they were really getting really heated. And I can remember thinking that they were going to fight because anger had always been you know, in my mind, in the way that my brain had been trained been trained at that time, always led to uh when people got angry, they you got hit. There was always violence, and it never ceased to amaze me that they didn't hit each other. They argued and then they went away from each other. I was very fond of that union rep actually, and his name was Clive. But he was a really nice man. Some men called Clive are nice men.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Chapter eight The PUSH Months Later A whole community of women in the same situation had shown itself to Vanessa, and now, instead of fighting for just herself and her children, she saw that it was much more than that. For every woman like Dawn who fought the flawed system, there would be a glimmer of hope for the rest still fighting. This was bigger than Vanessa and her kids. This was for all the other women out there trying to escape their own clives. A month earlier, she had attended a conference in London, attended by some of the finest legal minds in the country. Several judges, legal practitioners, academics, and many women like Vanessa, who wanted to have their say about the state of the law concerning contact between parents and children once a relationship had ended. In a perfect world it would be simple. A loving mother and father separate amicably and work out between themselves when each would have the children. But this seldom happened. And even when it did, judges would never hear about it because there would be no need for the courts to get involved. That was exactly the reason why the mothers and fathers at this conference were frustrated. They had felt let down by a system they had trusted. For the mothers escaping abusive relationships, the courts had awarded their abusive ex-partners with full access to their children. For the fathers, usually on the other side of the debate, they were fighting for access that they felt was being unreasonably denied. It was a delicate subject. And from the court's perspective, whatever action they took, one parent always seemed to lose out. Standing up. She stood up in front of the judge who chaired the conference, in front of all those men and women far more experienced in law than her, and argued that it could not be in the best interests of children to be subjected to abuse from an uncaring parent, rather than simply remaining with the caring one. Vanessa was not speaking from research. She was speaking as a mother who had lived through the violence and the mental abuse. She almost laughed out loud when the judge asked which legal practice she was with. She wasn't a lawyer. This wasn't just another case. This was her life. And what do you think should happen? The judge asked. Vanessa stood up and told him simply that all she wanted was what was best for her kids. This wasn't about getting back at Clive for years of abuse. If she thought for even one second that it would be better for her children to see their father, she would grant contact. But this was not the case. She guessed it had partly been her articulateness, her middle class accent that had enabled her to be heard. Vanessa was in no way a snob. But within the conference there were many who would not have listened to the inarticulate, working class mother from the council estate. She knew the system was classist and racist and misogynistic, and she was pleased she had managed to speak her mind. The applause from all the mothers who could not voice their frustrations brought a tear to her eye. Gail had given Vanessa a thumbs up when she returned to her seat. Vanessa smiled, knowing one speech would not make a difference. But by chance, the next time she found herself in London was for Amika again, and she was among those chosen to present their case to Cliff Maxwell, a top PR advisor to celebrities, to ask for suggestions on how to make their plight more public. Vanessa was surprised at how kind and courteous the man was. He could make or break a person's reputation, a very powerful man, and here she was, chatting to him about women being bullied into putting their children in danger, because a judge said it was in the best interests of the child. Cliff was sympathetic and talked about several possible avenues. He admitted that the key to stories in those days was celebrity endorsements. What they needed was to generate enough of a buzz that attitudes might be swayed. All it would take was one judge to look further into the psychological background of the parent being refused contact, and find that they were indeed unfit to see their children, and that case would rock the whole way in which mediation was decided. Although nothing concrete was established from this meeting, Vanessa went back to the village with a fresh perspective. She now knew what she had to do the next time she was in court. Clive watching. It didn't start at first. Since Clive had been released from prison, Vanessa had felt on edge. She had spent months wondering when he would strike and in what form it would come. Often she wondered why Clive had not tried to get into contact through his old friends still in the village. It was the waiting and the anticipation that annoyed her most. He remained in control that way, knowing she would be waiting. Then one day, the landlord of the checkers mentioned having seen Clive riding along King's Lane on a pushbike. The moment the words were out, Vanessa felt her stomach drop. Her plan of action was simple. Tell the girls that their dad had been spotted around King's Lane, and that if they saw him, they should speak to him but not go anywhere with him. Above all, she wanted the girls to report back to her so she could note down the time and date. He was not allowed anywhere near their house, and riding along King's Lane violated the restraining order still hanging around his neck. Times and dates would be ammunition in court. As it happened, Vanessa didn't see Clive once, although several people in the village told her on various occasions they had seen him riding up and down the lane. Don't worry, Mummy, Charlotte told her one evening after dinner. When you have to go back to court to stop Daddy coming near us, I will go and tell them that we don't want to see him anymore. Vanessa laughed, imagining her six-year-old on the stand. If only the courts would listen to a six-year-old and take her seriously. That would never happen, of course. The courts would think Charlotte's words had come from Vanessa. That she had been brainwashing the kids into thinking Daddy was a bad man, even though the evidence was right there. The panic button and the court escort. One afternoon, returning home from shopping, Vanessa turned down King's Lane to find a police squad car waiting outside the house. The panic button had been triggered about ten minutes earlier. They searched the house, nothing found. Vanessa thanked them, at least knowing they would arrive quickly if Clive turned up. It was not the last time the button tripped. Sometimes there would be a knock in the middle of the night, the police checking on her. Once Clive was actually there, sitting outside the house in the early hours in his car, drinking, just watching. On that occasion she pressed the button, and the police arrested him. He was taken to court. Vanessa assumed he would be sent back to prison. He was merely fined. A slap on the wrist. The law had let her down again. Because of Vanessa's refusal to allow contact, the courts had ordered the welfare officer to intervene again and interview all parties, including the children. When Vanessa turned up for her little chat, she knew as soon as she saw the welfare officer's face again that Clive had already won her over. He had been interviewed first this time, of course he had, and had deployed his charm, and here Vanessa was, playing catch-up in a room where the game had already been decided. And what exactly is wrong with wanting to see your children, Mrs. Wilson? He doesn't give a damn about the children, Vanessa said. This is about him remaining in control. Despite the girls telling her they did not want to see Daddy, she put it in her report for the judge that they should. Gail's idea. She rang Jackie, who told her she didn't need support. She was stronger than she gave herself credit for. Then she rang Gail. I just rang for a chat, she said, and to ask you if you'd come and hold my hand next week at the mini hearing. No, Claire said. No? I'm saying no because you know as well as I do that you don't really need me there. If you turn up with a friend holding your hand, he will think that's exactly what you are. Afraid. Maybe I am a little. I hate it in those courts. With him sitting just ten feet away, it sends shivers down my spine. Gail continued with a smiley voice. Vanessa could hear it through the phone. I just had an idea, but you'd never go for it. Tell me. What if you hired one of those male escorts to accompany you to court?

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Author reflection. I think of this chapter as the sound of women refusing to remain polite about danger. There is strategy here, humour here, and a kind of underground intelligence that women develop when official roots do not adequately protect them. The title reflects both the pressure exerted by the system and the pushback against it. One thing I wanted to preserve was the dark comedy that sometimes appears even in the grimmest periods. Survival is not solemn all the time. Sometimes women joke because joking is oxygen. Sometimes a ridiculous suggestion, like arriving at court with an invented new boyfriend, reveals something serious about how performative the whole process has become. If you are being judged all the time, then presentation becomes part of survival too. That is ugly, but it is true. Speaking at the conference was one of the most frightening things I had done, and I had done some frightening things by that point. The difference was that this fear was clean. I was choosing it, nobody was making me stand there. I was making me stand there. That distinction, chosen risk as opposed to imposed danger, was one of the things I was slowly learning to understand about what the previous years had taken from me.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Tiki Legal Landscape. Britain. What this means practically is that the women fighting these battles in the 1990s were fighting in advance of the law, using their own lives as the evidence base for reforms that would come too late for them, but not too late for those who came after. The anger Vanessa feels at the conference is the anger of someone who is not arguing about abstract principle. She is arguing about what happened to her daughters, and she is being required to argue it in a room full of people who have the luxury of treating it as an intellectual problem.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

What stage was I at? Stage strategic, what I believed. Knowledge was protection. The system could be influenced, if not beaten. My voice mattered, Bayo.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Questions women ask at this stage. How do you stay calm in court when he is sitting opposite you?

SPEAKER_03 14:18

You remember that composed is not the same as frightened. Composure is a strategy. It does not mean you are not afraid.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Did the activism ever put you at risk?

SPEAKER_03 14:28

I was always aware of the line between speaking publicly and making myself a target. Those are different things. Knowing the difference kept me safer. Interestingly, the local police contacted me and asked me if I would be interviewed by a researcher. I was fine with it, but it's only now I realize that was probably a deeper investigation of me to see if I was a threat to society, so not at risk from anyone but the system.