“The respondent shall return, or effect the return, of the child to the Mother in France by 4pm on23 March 2026 ”. (2) Paragraph 21 of the order of the Honourable Mrs Justice Judd dated21 January 2026 which provided: “The father shall pay to the applicant for the benefit of the child of the family a lump sum of£3,000 by 4pm on6 February 2026 to enable her to engage in proceedings in Nigeria in order to secure the return of the child to France.” (3) Paragraph 22 of the order of the Honourable Mrs Justice Judd dated21 January 2026 which provided: “The father will pay the applicant’s costs of the hearing on11 September 2025 summarily assessed at£2,000 inclusive of VAT by 4pm on6 February 2026 .”
“So far as the law is concerned I for my part accept the following propositions. (1) The contempt which has to be established lies in the disobedience to the order to return rather than in the original abduction. At the time of the abduction there was no court order which forbade the removal of the child from the jurisdiction. That such removal was an appalling mistreatment of both child and mother and, moreover, that it may be the crime of child abduction contrary tosection 1 of the Child Abduction Act 1984 do not in either case make the abduction a contempt of court. (2) Contempt of court must be proved to the criminal standard: that is to say, so that the judge is sure. Whatever the traditional form of notice to show cause may say, the burden of proof lies at all times on the applicant. (3) Contempt of court involves a contumelious, that is to say a deliberate, disobedience to the order. If it be the case that father cannot cause the return of the child he is not in contempt of court, however disgraceful and/or criminal the original abduction may have been. Nor is it enough to suspect recalcitrance, it has to be proved: see LB of Southwark v B[1993] 2 FLR 559 . That the onus remains on the applicant throughout is clearly demonstrated by Mubarak v Mubarak[2001] 1 FLR 698 .”
“What I derive from these authorities are the following further propositions: (1) The first task for the judge hearing an application for committal for alleged breach of a mandatory (positive) order is to identify, by reference to the express language of the order, precisely what it is that the order required the defendant to do. That is a question of construction and, thus, a question of law. (2) The next task for the judge is to determine whether the defendant has done what he was required to do and, if he has not, whether it was within his power to do it. To adopt Hughes LJ’s language, Could he do it? Was he able to do it? These are questions of fact. (3) The burden of proof lies throughout on the applicant: it is for the applicant to establish that it was within the power of the defendant to do what the order required, not for the defendant to establish that it was not within his power to do it. (4) The standard of proof is the criminal standard, so that before finding the defendant guilty of contempt the judge must be sure (a) that the defendant has not done what he was required to do and (b) that it was within the power of the defendant to do it. (5) If the judge finds the defendant guilty the judgment must set out plainly and clearly (a) the judge’s finding of what it is that the defendant has failed to do and (b) the judge’s finding that he had the ability to do it.”
“It is clear that the Nigerian Court was given entirely false information. ND knew nothing about the application, had not received any documentation from the Court and most certainly had not given her consent for Mr and Mrs O to take over parental responsibility for her son.” (at [16]): “It is obvious that K’s conduct, even on his own account, is at the extreme end of the index of gravity. It requires to be identified as such. K’s disregard for his son’s safety and emotional welfare has resulted in him being in an extremely vulnerable situation which requires every effort to be made to achieve a speedy resolution. It is difficult to imagine a situation where delay could be more inimical to the welfare of the child.” (at [33]): “Whilst the mother’s distress in this case is visceral, I too consider that my focus must be on the child. I do not think that this exercise should be constrained to L’s immediate circumstances. It is important to consider his situation in the context of his experience. I emphasise that this abduction was, in my view, in the most serious class of cases. It involved the brutal severance of L’s loving relationship with his mother and his complete deracination from every aspect of life as he knew and understood it. It involved complex, sophisticated, long-term planning and deception on the Courts, the Contact Centre, the mother and, most importantly, the child himself. It can only have been profoundly emotionally damaging to him. It has also been a protracted separation, even potentially involving L being retraumatised now by the loss of his father. The photographs and school reports, presented by the father, purporting to show L happy at school in Nigeria, are of little, if any, evidential significance against the wider canvass of the evidence. K has no credibility. Indeed, his attempts to portray L as happy, serve only to raise further concern, in my mind, as to his lack of empathy.” (at [36]): “The parens patriae has been described as an essentially protective jurisdiction. L’s need for protection, on my assessment of the evidence, is both clear and clamant. Recognising the rarity of circumstances in which the inherent jurisdiction can be invoked, I regard L’s situation as ‘exceptional’.”
“On the agreed facts the applicant was guilty of the most egregious behaviour having removed L from the care of his mother from whom he had never been separated and placed him in a foreign company [sic – I interpose to note this is clearly a typographical error and should read ‘country’] with complete strangers and thereafter obtained an order in favour of those strangers under false pretences.”
“Following my findings in November, the respondent points out that he made applications to the Nigerian court to set aside the guardianship order together with a certificate of urgency, and says he is doing what he can to progress things there. Whilst I accept that he has made applications to the Nigerian court, I simply do not accept that he is doing what he can to progress things there, even now. The application he made fell short of informing the court as to the false basis upon which the Guardianship order was obtained. He seeks to lay some of the blame for this on his lawyers, both here and in Nigeria. In my judgment, the responsibility is his own. He has given conflicting accounts of how the orders in Nigeria came to be made and the truth of it is that very little has changed over time. The prospect of this child being returned to his mother appears little closer than it ever did.”
“I have absolutely no doubt that I should make that order, which is in this child's best interests, given the lack of progression of the case in Nigeria without her input. I also bear in mind what has been said about her, without her being able to answer it, by the relatives in the Nigerian proceedings.”