A Hague mother but forever my child’s mother

My story started 12 years ago in 2014, when I said the very first “No,” followed by a “No More” in August 2020 when I returned with my child to safety in England and back into our family home. A British child, born in England, is being held abroad against their will. The 1980 Hague Convention, a treaty meant to prevent international child abduction, is being weaponised by their father to legally sanction the separation of his child from me their mother. The stark reality of my life is now a case.

• The Trap: A temporary 2-year expat work stay abroad became a 5-year nightmare of severe abuse and control when my ex-husband refused to return to England.
• The Violence: When I resisted, I was violently threatened, assaulted and told: “You can go, our child stays.”
• The Systemic Bias: From September 2020 to May 2023, after months of judicial nightmare at the Royal Court of Justice, the British Courts blindly enforced a weaponised Hague application, completely ignoring and dismissing the evidence regarding the abuse, my safety and the traumatic racism I experienced as a black woman, and finally that I never consented
  to a permanent move abroad.
• The Abandonment: The British Embassy abroad completely failed to protect my British child, after many attempts asking for safeguarding concerns regarding my child’s disclosure of racial motivated abuse with physical endangerment that left them with emotional, psychological and physical trauma.
• The Miscarriage of Justice: As a result of this misapplication, I have been reduced to an observer rather than a participant in my child’s life. I have no say at all in her life. The January 2026 decision limits me to only three visits a year. My child is forbidden from visiting me unless it is in the presence of their father or a paternal family member. We can only spend 6 hours together and I am prohibited from having them spend even a single night with me. These punitive conditions treat me as though I am a criminal, despite having committed no offence.

My evidence demonstrates that the 1980 Hague Convention Application was systemically weaponised as a tool of continuing coercive control against me by my ex-husband, who is exploiting international legal loopholes to alienate me from our child, and punish us in the cruellest, most inhumane, traumatising way with no accountability for my abuser who is completely shielded by the Hague Convention Law.

I am sharing this here with you because my story is like yours. The misuse of the Hague Convention has turned us into mothers who are grieving for their living children and has equally turned our children into orphans who are grieving for their living mothers. No victims should ever be treated in such an inhumane way. We are families ripped apart by men who are being shielded by a Convention that was meant to protect women and their children. Some of you have not seen or held your child/children in your arms for years. The last time I held mine was on the 11 January 2026 whilst attending the custody hearing abroad. Since then, my safety has been compromised, and I am left facing grave danger if I enter that country. No one else can imagine what it feels like to be a Hague Mother. Sacred time has been stolen from us that we can never have back. This practice violates basic human rights, family rights, child rights, and represents a profound institutional betrayal of mothers and their children.

My rights can be violated but they can never be erased.
My children’s rights can be violated but they can never be erased.

We are not just court room assigned docket numbers, we are human beings, but the life that is mostly being destroyed is my child’s’ life. They are innocent children who deserve to grow up being loved unconditionally by two parents, and two families, experiencing two cultures. That is the very essence of their rights and going against that, is simply immoral.

Now ask yourself one thing, why would a parent be so determined to take that away from his child?

Stop weaponising ‘Habitual Residence’ to protect domestic abusers. Don’t ignore our sorrows, don’t ignore our children’s distress. NO. ENOUGH.

From one Hague mother to others, they can never silence us. Here I remain with a heart filled with
hope, love and gratitude to keep going.