The Tim Haries Story – ‘Cast From The Earth’
This is Tim Haries true story.
How one mans life was wiped out in the secret family courts, how he was cruelly separated from his two little girls and how he tried to petition the Queen for help – not just for himself, but for all fathers.
To fully understand my story I’ll have to take things back in time to when I first met the mother of my children. What you read here is only the tip of the iceberg.
It was sometime in 1993 when we met and started a relationship. After a few weeks her parents discovered that she was seeing me and made her life difficult for a while. After a few days they gave her the option of repenting or being kicked out of her family home. She had been brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness and her family were heavily involved within this religion.
As it happened she chose to be with me as she had already decided that she wanted to leave the faith as she didn’t want to live by their strict lifestyle anymore. Ultimately, her parents stuck to their word, threw her out, and she came to live with me.
After a few days we were visited by 2 old men who were ‘elders’ of the Jehovah’s Witness’ who wanted to speak to her alone, to which she agreed. When they left she was seriously distressed by what they had asked her, they wanted to know all the in depth intimate details of our relationship. Soon after, this young lady was ‘dis-fellowshipped’ from the JW faith, which in brief means that all her friends and family that were JW’s were not allowed to associate with her.
Life went on and we grew closer together, we lived a ‘normal’ life, doing normal things like people do in their late teens and early twenties. I remember a particular stage at the beginning of our lives together where she started talking to a man in our local pub, I knew this man but not much about him, as it happened he was the father of her old best friend from her JW years.
He had not seen his children for years because after his relationship with his wife broke down, he was seen to be almost evil and a threat to his children. If they had contact with him they might at some point be influenced by his ‘worldly’ ways and be tempted to leave the religion. She used to say that that sort of behaviour was what happens all the time with Jehovah’s Witness families if they separate or divorce.
Bear in mind here that the only way it is acceptable for a JW to divorce or separate is if there is domestic violence or adultery.
After a year or so of us being together I managed to talk her into trying to build some bridges with her family which she grudgingly and slowly did, but it was almost 2 years before they even said hello to me. Suddenly after a few months she had an argument with her parents after they had mentioned religion. That was it; she instantly cut them out of her life for months.
She was so against the JW faith that she didn’t want to hear of it or have anything to do with it. This on/off relationship with her parents lasted until we separated. At the time my eldest daughter was 9. In that time my daughter had her Grandma and Granddad in her life for maybe 50% of the time, which consisted of occasional visits that were somewhat strained. This tense atmosphere was not only aimed at her own parents but at my family too, everybody had learned that 1 single word out of place and they would be ostracised for months at a time.
We had married in Jamaica after 4 years together and a couple of years later we had my first little angel, the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen. I sat there in the hospital and fed her with her first bottle and promised her I’d always be there for her and make sure nobody would ever hurt her. Sometime later along came little girl number 2, another amazing little thing in my life. We became like so many others – a normal family – I worked hard to give them everything they wanted in life.
When my eldest was four my ex-wife decided she going to go back into the JW religion, she started going to meetings at the Kingdom Hall and soon started taking the children with her while I was at work. I objected to this but was told time and time again that “If I stood in the way of God’s work then we would have to get divorced”.
My little girl’s 5th birthday arrived and I bought her a present from me and one from her little sister, downstairs she came that morning all excited and started to unwrap my present when suddenly she stopped! Started crying and shouting that she was going to be “destroyed”, it broke my heart!
Between me and her mum we calmed her down and consoled her. I pulled her mum to one side and said to her that this had to stop; it was just wrong that a child of 5 was talking of being destroyed and that Armageddon was coming soon. Unknown to me this is what the JW’s preach and only Jehovah’s people will survive to live in the “paradise” that the earth will become.
My protestations fell on deaf ears and my ex flared into a rage and attacked me and hit me, I restrained her until she calmed down, at this point she called the police and told them I had attacked her! I was arrested and released without charge. It was at this point in my life that I realised that I had better comply with whatever she wanted or risk losing my family to Jehovah, the man. I was suddenly became a mouse.
We carried on with life and were reasonably happy, we never argued, if I sensed that she wanted to argue I went out for a while so she would have time to diffuse. We learned to compromise on religious issues and celebrations, although she did try a number of times to argue to get out of the compromise but I would go out for a while and get her parents to come round and talk to her, I just would not rise to her.
One day in 2009 I came home from work and was told that I was getting divorced, talk about a shock, I was astounded!
At the time she had booked a villa in Florida so we could go looking at the possibility of emigrating to our favourite place. She thought the psychologist involved with the family had ‘diagnosed’ a problem she seemed to have wanted to exist for years (out of respect to a person’s past wishes I shall say no more on this), but now I was being told by somebody who is religiously not allowed to divorce, that this is what was happening.
There were no reasons, she said I had done nothing wrong but it was happening and nothing was going to change the fact, there was no talking about it she just went to bed.
The following morning she again wouldn’t discuss it. I got a little suspicious and sneaked a look at her phone and there was the answer – text messages! I confronted her and was instantly met with anger, the first thing I heard from her which I will never forget is “I want you out! If you don’t get out I’ll call the police and they’ll get you out” at which she stormed up the stairs and packed my bag!
Not wanting to upset my girls I had half an hour with them and left in tears! It all suddenly came to me, I’d found out that this woman who hated people that had affairs had had an affair!
If her religion knew this she would be ‘dis-fellowshipped’. She later confirmed this when she told me “he’s told me he’s going to come to the meetings”! That was it, get rid of me, make out it’s my fault, she keeps in the good books of the religion, he converts, and so they can be together without any upset to her faith.
I was in pieces, a broken man, but I soon had an idea of who this other man was. I contacted the hospital to try and speak to the psychologist to ask how this family breakdown might affect his ‘client’ but never managed to get hold of him.
I was not 30 seconds out of the car park when my phoned. All I heard was “don’t you make waves at the hospital or you’ll never see them kids again”, no wonder she wouldn’t discuss anything – she was having an affair with the psychologist and knew his career was at risk if anybody found out. I made an official complaint to the NHS as any man would do; subsequently a total cover up happened.
I don’t just say this loosely, the evidence exists and legal action is still on-going but this is another story. I know that the NHS later informed Cafcass that this psychologist’s behaviour was not malpractice and I know that Cafcass have had a seriously jaded view of me since their involvement began.
To start with, contact with the girls was ok.
I phoned them every night and saw them a couple of times a week at the times I was told I could. After a few weeks, just after I’d taken the girls home I had a text message from my ex-wife saying ‘you’re not seeing the girls again’.
What I knew was going to happen, had started. I managed to speak to their mum but to no avail, I said I would continue to phone the girls at 7pm every day as agreed but was told “not on my phones”. At this I took a mobile phone round to her parents for the girls, I never managed to speak to the girls on that phone once.
Apparently (as I later found out) one of the ‘girls’ broke the Sim card! 2 or 3 weeks later I had a text from the girls’ mum saying that I could see them on Saturday if I wanted, so contact was back on again but it again only lasted 2 or 3 weeks. This on/off contact went on until the 30th January 2010 when 30 minutes after returning the girls I received a text message stopping contact again, I sensed that day that something was not quite right with the girls as the youngest just wanted to sit on my knee constantly and kept making me promise to phone her that night.
I have not seen or spoken to either my girls since that day. About 2 months went by and I suddenly received a text from my ex-wife’s phone, “Hi Dad”, I was torn whether to reply! Should I reply? I decided I’d better not, had one of the girls sent it without her mum knowing? I thought it wasn’t worth the risk of getting her into trouble. Another couple of months went by and another message saying that the girls had expressed an interest in seeing me and that she would arrange it if I paid her money. I had already by this time told my solicitor to proceed with the court process.
September 2010 and the 1st court date arrives, Their I am, an ordinary man walking into court thinking that I shall be walking out of court with everything sorted out and I’d be seeing the girl’s within a few days. How wrong was I?
Cafcass were soon involved and requested that I get a specific question answered by the NHS relating to how contact might affect one of the girls. The NHS refused to answer so he wrote himself and again they refused to answer. The judge just made comment that that it was up to me to get the answer and not for him to make them give the answer. This caused 5 months of delays.
At one point I managed to have indirect contact ordered in the form of a letter to be followed by a second letter and the girls to be given a mobile phone each so they could phone me. The first letter was taken by Cafcass and I was told to write the 2nd letter within a few days as he wanted to capture on the girls’ positive attitude.
Due to illness and holidays the Cafcass man took about 7 weeks before going to see the girls again. He phoned me to let me know he had been to see them and said that they didn’t want the letter, didn’t want him to read it and that they didn’t want the phones. He went on to say that he thought that something was “wrong, not quite right in that house”.
We discussed having a meeting with me, his service manager, a former treating psychologist and a few others being present to which we agreed. I spoke to his service manager about this while he was on sick leave who also agreed and said that she would get him to set it up when he came back to work. This meeting never took place before he retired and the service manager then denied any knowledge of such a meeting being discussed. I had by this time run out of money to pay my solicitor and started to represent myself.
A Guardian was eventually appointed and I thought we may start getting somewhere and then she submitted her report. Recommendations of no direct contact and indirect contact by way of cards/letters only.
It was at this point that the ‘nodding dog’ that sat there in the court room turned and came out fighting.
Her report may as well have been written by my ex-wife. I soon realised that while we had been in court time after time, people were talking of things I had knew knowledge of. My ex-wife had been filing statements with the court and Cafcass but I was not served any of these.
I had been getting accused of harassment but had done nothing but serve appropriate statements/forms at court and the judges were accepting these screams of harassment as fact. At one point my ex-wife stated in court twice that I could see the girls if I stopped the complaint against her new man (and now husband) but the judge just let these comments pass, the court had started down a path and there was to be no straying from it.
Something that I don’t think some people grasp is the fact that my complaint is not against the psychologist, this man had made a mistake and probably realises this. My complaint is against his employers. If they can so readily lie, have evidence provided by them put in front of them and eventually stick to the original lie, what else do they lie about? They can’t be allowed to get away with such behaviour.
Eventually we come to having a final hearing, but in the previous judges wisdom she will not allow me to file any documents of evidence which would prove all the false allegations that were made against me, allegations of domestic violence, fraud, alcoholism, stalking, stealing and I’ve lost count of how many of harassment.
I appealed this decision of not being allowed to file my evidence, while at the RCA the Lord I was appearing in front of actually used the words ‘obviously’ ’clearly’ and ‘alienated from your children’.
Why the court in Sheffield couldn’t grasp this is beyond me. I had told them right from the start that this is what was going to happen but nobody listened. I lost my appeal and was returned back to the local court with a different judge, as it happens, this judge allowed my evidence to be filed so in a roundabout way the appeal was won. What he wouldn’t do was order what I had been requesting for the last 18 months, an expert. We had never had any expert specifically appointed to work with the family, it had always seemed as though the professionals involved were scared of the idea.
Discussions at pre-trial hearing were had regarding an expert, we got to the point of discussing the finances of it, the Guardian had brought CV’s of expert’s it seemed to be almost agreed, but as soon as the girls’ mum was asked her opinion the Guardian instantly changed her opinion to align with the mothers, no expert.
A final hearing was then held at which I disproved all the false allegations made against me I actually thought that he might make some sort of positive order but knew in my heart that all he would do was rubber stamp the Guardian’s final recommendations of no direct/indirect contact and make a section 91 order to stop me from trying to see them again for a period of time. I was right, that’s exactly what he did, effectively wiping me from the lives of my two little girls.
Two little girls that had been turned so obviously been surrounded by such negativity about their father that one of them wrote to a judge saying that she ‘wished her dad would be cast from the earth’.
I know that whatever my girls have said is not their own words, their words are what has been implanted in their minds and they wouldn’t dare say anything other than what they know they have to say. They quite literally have the fear of God in them. An issue which the local courts have ignored, even though LJ Ward directed me to focus heavily on this issue.
I am just a man who wants his children to have what they deserve, a good fulfilling and balanced relationship with both of their parent’s. I have endured false allegations, financial investigations, assault by the police, my car being reported as a stolen vehicle and being referred to by my ex-wife as an ‘ex-parent’.
A campaign by the mother of my children and her new husband, designed to force me to walk away from my children. Everything I have ever said to the Guardian or in court has been totally ignored. I recall once being told by a judge that “I am not interested in any statements you want to make”. A campaign which the courts and Cafcass have embraced. If they read this I have a message for them, “Sorry, but this is not going to happen! Never! The olive branch has always been held out, in the long term interests of the girls, please take hold of it”.
On the 7th May 2013 I appeared before LJ Thorpe at the Royal Court Of Appeal.
In short, I am a loving father and my girls are missing out on so much by not having a relationship with and it’s all the mothers fault. But, he could not find a point of law that the previous judge had broken and so could not allow my appeal to be successful.
I believe he wanted to but just couldn’t, or wouldn’t. What is the point of the appeal court? I suppose I could have carried on fighting through the courts and end up at the European Human Rights Court, but what’s the point? There isn’t one, all that would happen is me wasting my time and energy for a further rubber stamping exercise.
This brings us to where I am today, THE LOWER COURTS HAVE SLAMMED THE DOOR SHUT, THE COURT OF APPEAL CAN SEE WHAT’S HAPPENED BUT SAY THEY ARE POWERLESS.
WHERE DOES A MAN GO FROM THERE?
Tim Haries, Father4Justice
Cast From Earth – pictures with his daughters, on an F4J Demo 2012 and the protest June 2013.
