Parenting, religion and conflict: N (A Child)

How should the Family Court treat a dispute about the custody of a small child when a religious conflict between parents comes into play? The issue came before HHJ Clifford Bellamy, sitting as a Judge of the High Court, in a series of hearings of which the most recent is N (A Child: Interim Care Order: Interim Removal) [2015] EWFC 40.

The issue in brief

The history of the case is very complex. N is aged eight. His parents are estranged: his mother is a practising Jehovah’s Witness and his father was described at an earlier hearing [N (A Child: Section 37: Interim Care Order) [2014] EWFC 53] as “nominally an Anglican” [2014:79]. At the suggestion of a Chartered Psychologist instructed by the parties, both parents had undertaken cognitive behavioural therapy. The father was very concerned at what he alleged was indoctrination of an impressionable eight-year-old; the mother, on the other hand, contended that N was a Jehovah’s Witness by choice (and, indeed, that is what N had himself told the social worker assigned to the case). Continue reading