A mother found to have been raped by her ex-partner was “devastated” after the family court permitted the convicted sex offender to have contact with their child.
Kristoffer Paul Arthur White, a serial rapist, was granted unsupervised access to his daughter following a recommendation by a Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) officer, who carried out a risk assessment for the court.
Not only had White been found by the family court to have raped the child’s mother on three occasions but he also had a criminal conviction for raping a stranger in 2008. He can be named after an application submitted to the court by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).
The mother has told of her horror at hearing the recommendation that White should be allowed contact with her daughter, who is of primary school age.
“It was like being told that, despite the court’s findings, Cafcass doesn’t believe you,” she said. “A judge has said it happened. But it doesn’t matter that he’s a convicted rapist and he raped you – he can spend time with your child. It was earth-shattering.”
The girl’s mother went on to successfully appeal against the order and has since submitted to the court that Cafcass is an “actively harmful organisation” that is not “fit for purpose”.
In court documents, her legal team said: “That a Cafcass officer … took the view that a man who dragged a young woman into a garden and raped her twice and then went on to rape the mother in these proceedings three times was safe to have contact with a [young] girl in an unsupervised setting, is a damning indictment of Cafcass’s role and its work.”
Cafcass, which was rated “outstanding” by Ofsted this year, said it was unable to comment because proceedings have not concluded.
White’s access to his child was suspended after the appeal and pending a final decision on contact by the court. The case was referred to another judge, and a children’s guardian from Cafcass was appointed in June this year to represent the girl in relation to the press application to publish White’s name.
The new guardian has advised the court that White, a former soldier, “is a danger to women and children and he is unsafe to have any form of contact or involvement” with his child. They have also supported a fresh application by the mother to strip him of his parental responsibility.
The mother said: “I find it concerning that two employees of Cafcass came to polar opposite conclusions regarding safeguarding – it highlights a lack of systems to follow and a lack of awareness of the impact of domestic abuse and sexual assault.”
Now TBIJ and the Observer can reveal the wider details of the case after the court issued a transparency order that permits the mother to talk about what happened. Before the parents’ separation, the mother and child lived in an environment of fear and intimidation due to White’s coercive and aggressive behaviour, the court found.
After a fact-finding hearing in December 2022 Judge Sophie Harrison made various other serious findings following an application brought by the father to change the arrangements under which he saw his daughter.
They included that on three occasions during the parents’ relationship, the father had raped the mother and that, on one occasion after the relationship ended, he had sexually assaulted her.
Findings in the family court are made by a judge on the balance of probabilities, whereas in the criminal court convictions are brought on a standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt”.
A Cafcass officer filed a report in April 2023 that dealt with the extent and nature of the contact the child should have with her father.
Harrison said the officer was “mindful of the serious nature of the court’s findings and was concerned that the father expressly did not accept these findings”.
Despite this, Cafcass initially recommended that contact could progress from a supported contact centre and into the community. Overnight contact could then happen after at least a year if there had been no difficulties.
Then, in June 2023, Harrison made an interim order that White’s contact with his child could move to being unsupervised in the community.
At a final hearing to decide the level of contact on 12 February this year, the Cafcass officer shifted her position to say that contact should not take place in White’s home, or overnight, while there was “an unaddressed risk of domestic abuse”. It was also recommended he complete a domestic abuse perpetrator programme (DAPP).
In a judgment Harrison said she found the Cafcass officer to be a “cogent, child-focused and sensible witness” who had not promoted “contact at all costs”, as had been suggested by the mother’s barrister, Elisabeth Traugott.
The judge said the officer had recognised both the serious findings against White and the child’s “positive relationship and attachment to her father”. She said contact notes showed the father’s behaviour towards his daughter had been “loving, patient and child-focused”.
The judge said she was concerned the mother’s proposal to stop or significantly curtail her daughter’s contact with White would deprive the child of a regular and loving presence in her life.
Harrison made a final order for unsupervised community contact between White and his daughter and said he should complete a DAPP before applying to increase his contact. That decision, however, was overturned on appeal after a hearing in April before Judge Greenfield.
The mother was represented this time by barrister Charlotte Proudman, who told the court Harrison’s order had failed to sufficiently address the risk posed by a convicted rapist to his former partner and their child.
She said White had only “begrudgingly” – through his barrister – accepted the court’s findings at the final hearing, had previously accused the mother of lying about the allegations and had not completed a DAPP.
It was the mother’s case that the contact order was “unsafe” and had been made despite the father’s “extremely serious risk profile”.
The court was reminded that White had served four years of a nine-year sentence for raping a teenager in 2008. According to press reports White dragged the 19-year-old into a garden, threatened to kill her and raped her twice. He was identified through his DNA two years after the attack and convicted in 2011. He denied the offence at the time and continued to deny it during the family proceedings.
Responding to the mother’s grounds for appeal, White said that by the time of the final hearing, unsupervised community contact with his daughter had been taking place uneventfully for seven months. White’s barrister, Thomas Pye, said the proposal to stop contact would cause “disruption and upset” to the girl and would deprive her of a loving presence in her life. He said it had been noted by the Cafcass officer that the parents agreed his daughter enjoyed the contact and had a good relationship with her father.
Greenfield allowed the appeal on two grounds, including that the district judge, Harrison, – having refused the parties permission to give evidence – had not given sufficient weight to the mother’s written statements describing the traumatic impact of the father’s abuse and of the court proceedings. The issue of contact will be determined by the court at a later date.
The mother told the court the process of giving evidence about multiple rapes without legal representation until the final hearing had been harrowing.
In her final statement to the court she said: “My self-esteem was destroyed by the father. He systematically took down every recognisable part of myself … The abuse I lived through has affected every part of my life.”
Signed off work with suicidal thoughts, she experienced acute anxiety when she knew her daughter was going to have unsupervised contact with White, according to court documents.
The mother supported a joint application by the TBIJ and freelance journalist Suzanne Martin to name White in connection with the family proceedings.
She explained: “I supported the application because [White] is a risk to women, children and the wider community.”
Judge Moradifar said the facts of the case demonstrated a “compelling public interest argument that prevents the abuser shielding behind his/her rights or those of a child which prevent him/her from being publicly identified”.
In a judgment published in July, he also ruled that naming White was necessary because his “established course of conduct” may expose people not involved in the case to a risk of harm.
The newly appointed guardian acknowledged the public safety argument for naming the sex offender but had opposed the application, arguing that because there was already information in the public domain about his criminal conviction, further publication was unnecessary.
The guardian’s opposition to naming White led the mother to submit to the court that Cafcass was empowering the father to shield himself behind the child’s rights without any proper regard for his behaviour and the consequences for his victims.
Her barristers, Proudman and Traugott, wrote in court documents: “Cafcass’s position changed from pro-contact at all costs with a rapist father to not supporting any contact only once there was a successful appeal […] and proceedings became the subject of media scrutiny and a transparency order.”
Representing the children’s guardian, the barrister Oliver Wraight said he took significant issue with a large number of points made on behalf of the mother. They included that Cafcass was a “harmful organisation”and that the guardian was “protecting a rapist”.
He told the court: “Cafcass is not an amorphous body that emits a single view. Guardians provide their views. There is a legitimate public debate on whether children should have contact with fathers who have perpetrated physical or sexual violence.”
