Our client based in Tyne and Wear contacted us as they were far along in a bitter custody battle with their ex-partner and starting to lose ground. The client was the father and felt that his case was not being fully and honestly considered because the courts, social services, police and other partnership agencies felt automatically aligned to support the mother in matters of this ilk.
Custody Dispute investigations are fast replacing Cheating Spouse investigations here at Surmount as the most popular engagement for service we receive from private clients. More and more people are feeling like their children could be at risk from their ex or the people they associate with and find local authority agencies and police are not supportive in acquiring the evidence needed in order to formulate child protection plans, formal custody documents and courts orders.
In this case, our client knew that his ex partner was in a relationship with someone who was a convicted sex offender and had just been released from prison for violent crimes. She denied it to social services and the court and she was believed. He had also been told that she was a heavy drug user and occasionally dealt drugs. She denied this and was once again believed without testing ever being requested.
Our client worried that if he was to lose primary care of his children then they would go back into the care of their mother who would not only allegedly use drugs around them but also potentially put them in the company of someone who had once committed sex offences on children and was prone to violence.
We discussed a plan with the client and agreed that we needed to acquire evidence that his ex-partner was still in a relationship with a man, in the face of a formal order, she denied to the courts was occurring. Furthermore, we needed to gather evidence surrounding the potential drug use / drug dealing.
Over the course of a two day period we completed both close-quarter and distant surveillance on the ex partner of our client and very quickly affirmed that the man she denied she was seeing was still very much a part of her life in an intimate capacity. Furthermore, we were able to get one of our operatives close enough in a public place to secure evidence of her consuming illicit substances.
Within 12 hours of finishing this operation we had completed a findings report, calibrated all video and photographic evidence and got it straight into the hands of our client. They in turn went and handed it straight to their solicitor and an emergency hearing was arranged at court with a revised child protection order put into place by the local authority immediately.