Cinders V Charming: A Personal Account of Domestic Violence and the Family Courts [Hardcover]

`. . . I phoned my solicitor. "He's stripping the house. Can't you do something?" My solicitor replied, "At least he's only removing the furniture. I've got another client whose husband is knocking the house down brick by brick to stop his wife getting it."'

`. . . She started her car and we drove hurriedly to the next corner. Then we stopped and looked at each other. This wasn't a film, it wasn't cops and robbers. We weren't the Bill. No matter how desperate we were to recover the boys, sensible people didn't do car chases.'

`. . . the barrister told the judge she didn't deserve being shouted at. He replied that he was shouting over her shoulder at me and that it wasn't directed at her. Refusing to move out of the way she literally stood between me and the judge.'

`. . . Several times they were threatened with being ejected from the court room for their contrived spoiling tactics. I tried to face the judge and speak to him rather than looking directly at these three hostile opponents.'

`. . . Hiding things became a way of life. Secretly disposing of sweetie wrappers became a metaphor for my life.'

Cinders v Charming documents Cristina Wed's experience of living in an abusive relationship; how it impacted on her self-esteem and sense of identity, making it difficult to leave. Following her escape from the violent relationship with her four children, she has described their resulting homelessness and the obstacles they had to surmount to regain the family home.
The court battles began a month after escaping from the relationship and continued for the next seven and a half years, so that they were never free from the abusive relationship they had tried to leave behind. The book is based on Cristina's years of experience of the family court system, in a case that involved around 70 court hearings, more than 20 judges, and hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of private capital and public money. It is an argument for greater openness and accountability in the family courts, which have traditionally been closed to the public.
Cristina's argument is that the current approach to domestic abuse by many professionals and the judiciary is as abusive as the perpetrator it purports to deal with, and that the family courts fail to protect women and children, consistently denying children in families which have suffered domestic violence a voice and favouring fathers' rights to contact over children's safety. Reviewing the 70 hearings, the book demonstrates the virtual impossibility of holding any professional in the system to account, even when they fail to live up to their own published guidelines and standards of practice. Cristina concludes the account of their ordeals in the legal arena with suggestions for how the family courts could be improved to give greater protection and security to women and children.

Cristina's interests include politics, law and education. She has worked for a Labour MP at the House of Commons, was offered a place to study law at Cambridge, and is a passionate believer in home education. She home-schooled her own children for several years, as well as providing tutoring to other children.

Drawing on her own experience, Cristina argues passionately for reform of a family court system that is frequently as abusive as the perpetrator of domestic violence.