Claire Orndal for Fair Hearing with David Challen and Charlie Wheeler of #NotJustMum 2 of 2
"I might have become an adult, but my experience is because they're pre 2021 and because I'm over 18, there's nowhere for me to go and I resent that."
Claire Orndal:
You go ahead.
Charlie Wheeler:
Yes. Thank you. Yeah. As I was saying, when it shut off, I feel like my voice has been consistently ignored. And my story doesn’t have any value. And it’s not until something physical that with my mum’s case, they’re really going to focus on the sexual element. that’s what I’m getting across from our experience of the police so far. And actually there’s so much more that, you know, is at a level with the sexual stuff and the abuse. And it just feels like until a certain threshold is met, which is sexual or physical, we don’t have justice. And if my mum didn’t have those things and she’d left him, Would she be able to have a case? And if my brother hadn’t been physically assaulted by my dad, would he not have a case? How can someone get away with so much abuse and causing damage to so many people and the victims not have some sort of route to justice?
Claire Orndal:
Absolutely, I understand. This frustration around the fact that, okay, we now have the recognition of coercive and controlling behaviour, but it seems to be predicated on physical, something that can be evidenced, if you like, more easily before the other is recognised, if the other is recognised at all. I understand, thank you. Can I ask that about, you said that you went to the police and tried to say, I’m paraphrasing, but if there’s a recourse to justice for you based on the, I’m going to say the psychological abuse that you experienced. Was that post 2021 as in post the Domestic Abuse Act?
Charlie Wheeler:
Yes, it was.
Claire Orndal:
Well, that’s very telling then, isn’t it? That’s thank you. Thank you for sharing that because obviously that ratified the fact that coercive and controlling behaviour is in the law [the Domestic Abuse Act] now. But from what I’ve read about, I think on your campaign page, you feel like there is, I can’t think of the word, but there is a disconnect, I guess, between the way that we’ve now recognised that children right now, children who are children right now are being recognised as victims, hopefully, of all the different types of abuse, including coercive control and behaviour. But that doesn’t seem to be applicable to you. Is that right? Can you speak to that?
Charlie Wheeler:
Yeah. Yeah. So and you know, and any progress is great. And and so that change is important, and it’s welcome. But yeah, I definitely feel like because because I I’m aged out of that. You know what I don’t have a voice. It’s just the continuous feeling of not having a voice and not having a route for me to take. And as much as as much as it’s great for children now, it’s like, well, what about the we were all children once?
Claire Orndal:
“The grown children,” yeah.
Charlie Wheeler:
Yeah. You know, I’m still that child.
Claire Orndal:
Yes.
Charlie Wheeler:
I might have become an adult, but my experience is because they’re pre 2021 and because I’m over 18, there’s nowhere for me to go and I resent that.
Claire Orndal:
Yeah, I can understand that. I seem to remember that you have been told by somebody that almost too much time has passed. Did somebody, can you tell me who said that and in what context and anything else you’d like to say about that?
Charlie Wheeler:
Yeah, it was the police again. And it was when I brought up whether there’s a route for me to take. And essentially it was, there’s a statute, there’s no statute of limitations on sexual abuse is my understanding. But because that didn’t happen, everything else has kind of aged out because I moved out of the family home before any, you know, it was 2011 I moved out and went to uni. And then 2015, 16 when I stopped going back for summers.
Claire Orndal:
I see. I understand. Thank you very much. I guess a question to both of you, I don’t know who would like to answer first, is what are you able to pinpoint what you would like, what you would actively like to happen, what progress you would like to see?
David Challen:
You go first, Charlie.
Charlie Wheeler:
Oh, okay. I think I think for me it’s it’s having that route to take, and it doesn’t, because I know the courts are overwhelmed. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a criminal route, you know, if I can go down the civil route. I’m not. I’m not out there to make money from this. It’s it’s more about. But I know money would bother my dad. because he’s just obsessed with money. So, you know, I feel like, you know, even being able to do that is something, it’s recognition. It’s someone saying in a court setting, you had a really **** time. He abused you. You’re a victim in your own right. And we see that and we rule in that way.
Claire Orndal:
Thank you. That makes sense to me. Thank you. David?
David Challen:
Yeah, I guess. See, I’m in similar voice to Charlie, like, I think we’re past the point of no return to a place that we are We have a recourse. I would love to, obviously the reason I speak up, because I don’t know if it’s obvious, is because you don’t want the pattern to go round and round again. But also, if he was, if that had happened, I would have reported him. And I know today it wouldn’t hold its weight in water. And it’s all predisposed to a position of your worth is defined by, not that it should be defined this way, but the primary victim and children are co-victims in their own right. And so there is a difficulty, but the primary thing here is that, the psychological impact of it, because that is the what’s not recognised in law. children as victims in their own right is legislation. It’s not There’s no definable quality to that. It’s all predisposed to the primary victim, which obviously is why, from what I can tell, is why a civil law firm would not want to touch that because, you know, children don’t stand on their own merit. Unless you’ve been subjected to sexual violence yourself or physically assaulted yourself, the psychological harm has no equal weight or footing. despite what legislation says, despite what the Domestic Abuse Act has reconciled with. And obviously that’s the conversations that are happening with the Lords and things like that. And it is finding a route by which to have a criminal recourse, whether it’s a child in your own immediate right of being a child, your primary age, young person age, but adult children still exist. You know, I was speaking with the charity Children Heard and Seen the other day and they support children who maybe the pathway from my experience of where a parent has killed another parent and the perpetrator of the killing is in prison. Obviously I said that the juxtaposition of the abused, the real victim or the original victim before the final victim was delivered was the person who’s in jail for killing the person. It’s very complicated, isn’t it? But there is no route for an adult child survivor in that part. So, but even in the complexities of my own story, what should be agreeable is to have your own experiences. You should be able to report that in adulthood the same way as in historic child abuse. You know, have it properly recorded, investigated in its own right, and there should be a route to that. How that reconciles, with a parent or a victim that doesn’t want to report it is difficult in its own merit, but you shouldn’t have to have that affirmed by someone else because you are a victim in, I mean, I keep saying you’re a victim in your own right. It is the mind-boggling part of this, of which in proliferating the language of coercive control, there will be many young people who grow up to be adults and many young adults that will grow up to fully formed adults that will help their parents understand and carry the lifeblood of their own journey to say that what was normalized in their home was not normal. In much the same way as my mother sitting in a Freedom Programme course in a prison suddenly realised, holy **** the person they’re speaking about is me. And me and my brother sat there going, yeah, these things were not normal. This was happening. And the shepherd of my life who’s looking me in the eyes, we’re suddenly realising is the lost sheep. And so this idea, it’s negligent, the idea that there is an ability for children’s voices to be heard in and of their own merit if they have their own autonomy and salvageable existence defined by the characteristics of what is coercive and controlling behaviour, but you cannot report it. It’s not worth it’s weight and harm, even though we’re told that harm is the same, if not worse, ability that’s impacted us. And there’s nothing to say that there are not adult child survivors who have ended their lives. Of course there are. If there’s as many women bereaved or families bereaved of fatal domestic abuse routed and well that have started through suicide, there will be many children beneath that and many children caught in different services, whether it’s mental health professionals, whether it’s me, gambling, addiction, harm. And it’s just and not to get too campaigny about it, but it’s like, it’s not 66 or 99 billion a year because it doesn’t really take into account the amount of services, amount of strain that adult child survivors are finding a therapeutic means of recovery are falling into different services, whether it’s offending or addiction or the mental health harm. And at the end of the day, you want to stop the perpetrator and the cycle of that follows. These people will not sometimes just have one family, but have many families, have many children. And it’s about stopping that harm. And, obviously this sits upon an understanding of coercion control that is still not very well criminalised. But you can’t point to that and say that’s an excuse in my opinion. And I think what Charlie’s campaign is doing is asking a very serious question. We are obviously We’re not long starting this and Charlie’s been done so much incredible work. I think we’re trying to look for the route and partners to that that can share that believed definable quality that is you should, if you are a child victim in your own right, you should have a means by which to have criminal recourse and to have your day in court in the same way as the co-victim or primary victim is the parent who’s suffered that. Witnessing and listening to it in the home has a psychological torrent of harm that wreaks so much abuse, not just in the immediacy of childhood but in adulthood and the same way as adult child survivors of sexual violence have a route back to that criminalisation to find their day in court, so too should the children who grow up to be adults who have been psychologically impacted by listening or hearing or seeing their harm being exerted in their own home.
Claire Orndal:
Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Charlie, did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
Charlie Wheeler:
I guess another area that I’d like to see is, we know that these people like us exist and I guess it’s support services around that. I know there are charities that almost have this issue as kind of like a sub issue, but I guess, making it a primary issue for an organisation to help and support people like us that have seen and witnessed what we have and kind of can work through the damage. Yeah, that was my other thought.
Claire Orndal:
Thank you. So just let me check that I’ve heard this correctly. As far as you’re aware, there doesn’t seem to be a support service that’s primarily just for adult survivors of child domestic abuse.
Charlie Wheeler:
Yeah, I haven’t. Unless David, you have, but…
David Challen:
I haven’t. Everything just sits at a bit. There’s nothing that is specialised in that. What I can see nationally, I’m probably sure there might be something locally as always as the postcode lottery, but there’s nothing nationally that I can find. And we’re very obviously happy to be connected to partners and collaborators that you feel can help as well, whether it’s the therapeutic means or the collaboration on the issues, that’s first and why we’ve obviously come to you and obviously want to support the work and giving our stories across to you because they will be relevant to the people that have a pathway through the family courts, definitely. But there is also the, I don’t want to say a wider issue, a foremost issue of children who have that ability to recognise that or report that or grow up to be adults. And we can lay waste to the amount of circumstances that there are because we all know it’s rooted in data, this stuff. And until you show that data of harm, the needle doesn’t tend to move.
Claire Orndal:
Thank you. So a few things that I’ve picked up on, I think from maybe your emails and your websites and things and articles, I guess. I’m just going to say all points that come to mind and then you feel free to talk about them. I’ve had a feeling that perhaps you’re coming up sometimes against accusations that you’re taking away from the mum by talking about your abuse, maybe. And I also felt like I’ve read that you feel that if you, meaning adult survivors of child domestic abuse, had more of a voice, you might be able to help current child victims. Yeah, those were my main points. Go ahead. Do you have anything you would like to say about those?
David Challen:
The only addendum I would have to the last one is the realisation that coercion control can sometimes, in many cases of domestic abuse, be a he said, she said. and you have a familial picture around you where if you’re enabling children to have their own voice and victimhood in their own right, I mean, in my eyes, how the criminalisation works, it should really sit as in a case of its own right and not as an aggravating factor of which most child the impact is it’s an aggravating feature of a crime. It doesn’t sit in its own right. So the criminalization has failed of its own account. But still, it can support existing cases. You know, my mother wouldn’t be free if it wasn’t without me and my brother and the great campaign groups behind it. But there’s so much collaborative work to the criminalization of it, of where if children have a voice, they can point to it. And if adult children are there and it’s recourse and elder abuse, there are so many roots. That’s the whole picture that we endear to the idea of everyone witnesses coercion control in some shape or form. And the, you know, friends and family on both sides of my family saw it over many years, both sides. And they all saw it. And so I think there’s a real validity to a powerful thing that can come from a campaign of what Charlie’s doing. It’s obviously finding the the root tier. Yeah, sorry. That’s a long addendum.
Claire Orndal:
Thank you. Charlie, did you have anything you wanted to say about?
Charlie Wheeler:
No, no, that sounded good. Thank you.
Claire Orndal:
Okay. So I think if I’m remembering it right, I think that I have in mind what Charlie, what you said on your campaign website about why you chose your name and that stuck with me. I thought, oh, perhaps somebody has accused you of taking away from a female’s experience by calling it “Not just Mum” or something such as that.
Charlie Wheeler:
I think I’m just very aware that this is, you know, when it comes to domestic abuse, we’ve got so much to do for primary victims.
Claire Orndal:
Yes.
Charlie Wheeler:
And so I didn’t want to, you know, make it almost come across that that’s fixed. So now it’s time to look at everyone else who’s impacted by this. Like it, I wanted something catchy, quick, something that people would remember.
Claire Orndal:
Yeah.
Charlie Wheeler:
But that’s not at the expense of primary victims and the laws around that because we still have so much further to go anyway. So no one specifically said that to me. I did have someone in my network who’s trans say, you know, maybe it could be, well, what about not just dads and things? And that’s the only feedback I’ve had that was kind of like, kind of pointed in a way but I kind of said to them well actually not just mum could apply to not just dad and you know it’s actually got quite a broad interpretation and really it’s about capturing people’s thought you know attention but also it’s reflective of my experience and which is you know she’s able to progress and go to the courts with her case and And it’s kind of more like, what about me?
Claire Orndal:
Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So as you know, Cristina was hoping to hear your point of view, just for, for the worth of that, but also because they are trying to gain information for case studies to do with the family court system. But what I’m hearing from you both is that Charlie, much as you’d like your day in court, you’ve never had a day in court because what’s happened to you has not been recognised. And David, you’ve been supporting your mum through her legal experience when it happened, but that you were never asked to go to court yourself.
David Challen and Charlie Wheeler:
Yeah.
Claire Orndal:
Brilliant.
David Challen:
I went to I went to court. I just didn’t have the language for her. If I had, you know, obviously a lot of my work is on if I had a scenario, I’d certainly want a child to have that outcome of recourse and if my father was still alive today, I’d still like to pursue that.
Claire Orndal:
I understand. Brilliant. Thank you so much. Do either of you have anything else that you would like to say to me? To put you on the spot.
David Challen:
I think I’ve covered everything I could possibly.
Charlie Wheeler:
Yeah, I think so too. I know I’ll leave this call and kick myself at something that probably should have popped into my head. But no, right now, no.
Claire Orndal:
I have that same feeling creeping away at me as well. Perhaps I’ve forgotten to add something. But of course, you both have my e-mail address. So if that happens, that’s no problem. You can e-mail me or we can arrange a different call or anything such as that. But thank you both so much for your time. That was really, really helpful for me. And I feel a bit strange saying that because though it’s helpful to me, it’s drawing on such negative things that you both have been through. But thank you very much for sharing that.
David Challen:
Thank you.
Charlie Wheeler:
Thank you, Claire. I really appreciate it. I mean, I guess moving forward, obviously you’ve come to us in the context of your own work and totally appreciate and very thankful for you to ask for our contributions, even though we haven’t directly passed through the family court. I’m sure there are many adult children at the end of this or have not two dissimilar feelings that can feed into the academic research that backs the work that you’re supporting. But if there is a way to obviously connect to Cristina, obviously you’ve already collected the information, I appreciate you doing that outside the scope of what you’re doing, but in a way that can kind of help find early partners in what we’re trying to achieve. You know, obviously it feels very nuanced, but in the reality, I think we’ve found in the school that there’s an awakening that will happen for many adult children and we’re the first few of them who are trying to do something about that. And I know that the campaign has got incredible legs to the work that Charlie’s doing and having early partners that can collaborate with us or help give us just an ear of support is immensely powerful because as you know with all the work that’s done in the sector and it’s hard to find partners that stick together or not stick together, but can collaborate outside the side of work that they’re doing. Just find that crossover, I think is really powerful. So in the future, we can grow what we’re hoping to achieve to give support and criminalisation. Yeah.
Claire Orndal:
Brilliant. I take that on board for sure. What’s going to happen now is that I will sort of get together my notes from today and anything that I put together will be passed on to Cristina and so for sure I will mention to her that you would like this partnership to continue and for her to include you in things going forward. I feel like I am a small cog in Cristina’s juggling her plates all the time to mix my metaphors. So she’s got a lot going on and I’m not necessarily privy to all of it, but I will for sure make sure that I am sharing that with her. And I guess if you, either of you come across somebody who you feel is an adult survivor and has that family court experience or court experience, I am sure that Cristina would find that very helpful.
David Challen:
Have you put, so just have you put a call out on social media at all? Is that not something you’re just doing a bit more privately? If there’s anything I can help share, let me know.
Claire Orndal:
I will definitely pass that on to the social media side. It’s a good idea. Thank you very much.
David Challen:
Cool. Okay. Have a great weekend.
Claire Orndal:
Yeah, you too. Thank you both.
