A woman in the UK who was savagely tortured and nearly killed at the hands of her former boyfriend has been served with an order that no domestic violence victim should ever have to receive. In? one of the most outrageous orders ever issued by any court in any jurisdiction, she faces jail time unless she writes her attacker about how the two children he gave her are doing.
In February 2011, Natalie Allman wanted to break off her engagement with Jason Hughes, a soldier in the UK’s Territorial Army–the equivalent of the Army Reserve here in the United States. They had been in a relationship since 2008, and were due to get married in April 2011. While Allman was sleeping in their home in Ross-on-Wye in the West Midlands, Hughes tried to smother her with a pillow, then beat her with a dumbbell and slashed her throat. Her twin sons, both two years old at the time, witnessed the attack. The ordeal went on for seven hours before Hughes allowed Allman to call an ambulance. Allman suffered eight wounds to her face, and needed plastic surgery to rebuild her throat. Hughes, who admitted he wanted to make Allman look “ugly” for trying to leave him, was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Now here’s where this story gets hideous. Last January, Hughes petitioned a judge for a residence and contact order under the Children Act 1989. Such an order requires a parent who retains custody of children to allow the other parent to have contact with the child. The intent of the law was laudable enough–give children a chance to maintain ties with both parents. However, if there is any case for an exception to that principle, it would be if one of the parents was abusive. Throw in that Allman’s boys witnessed the attack, and you would think this would have been an automatic denial, right?
Well, you thought wrong. A judge has ordered Allman to send letters to Hughes every Easter, September, and December to update him on how her now five-year-old boys are doing. She also must send up-to-date pictures of the boys. When Allman found out about this, it hit her with all the subtlety of an 18-wheeler. It was bad enough that after rebuilding her life with a new boyfriend, she had been forced to spend ?3,000 (roughly $4,600) fighting this order. Now, if she doesn’t comply with the order, she could potentially be held in contempt and sent to prison herself.
Needless to say, Allman is shaken up. She told The Sunday People that as she sees it, the judge who issued this order is allowing Hughes to “control us from behind bars.” By all rights, she said, Hughes lost any right to be part of her life when he nearly killed her, and this order will make it all but impossible to heal. “What about our rights to get on with our lives and forget the trauma he has put us through?” she asked. “As long as we are in constant contact how are we going to do that?”
Having been a victim of domestic violence myself, I feel Allman’s pain. Back in 2012, my ex-wife had the nerve to try to friend me on Facebook, and I couldn’t have blocked her fast enough.? This was a woman who, after three years of putting me through all kinds of emotional abuse, tried to frame? me up on false charges and then put me at risk for being charged for bigamy by sending me fake divorce papers (I got divorced for real, fortunately). As far as I’m concerned, my ex-wife abused me all over again with what she did after I left her. What Hughes is doing to Allman now is really no different.
There’s a petition on Change.org calling for Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Chris Grayling–who is the equivalent of the Attorney General here in the United States–to intervene and overturn this horribly unjust order. Sign here. The petition’s organizer is also trying to find a way to crowdfund Allman’s legal expenses–a burden she shouldn’t even have to face. There is something fundamentally wrong when someone can abuse a spouse or partner in this way and still have a route to elbow his or her way back into his or her former spouse or partner’s life.To my mind, Grayling not only needs to overturn this order, but find a way–if it is legally possible–to jackhammer shut any loophole that made it possible for it to even get this far.
