Father wins fight to have false claim of convictions removed from court record

A sentence in a family court judge's written judgment which wrongly described a man embroiled in a dispute about his 14-year-old daughter as having convictions for domestic violence is to be corrected.

The man mounted a High Court appeal after Judge Eleanor Owens refused to amend her judgment following a private family court hearing in Reading, Berkshire.

He complained his daughter would be left with the wrong impression of him if she read the judgment.

Now a High Court judge has ruled one sentence in Judge Owens' judgment, which said the man had "convictions for offences of serious violence towards his partner", must be altered.

Mr Justice Baker said the man's case was "unanswerable".

He said there had been allegations of domestic violence but no convictions.

"(Judge Owens') judgment was mistaken and the father invites me to set that single sentence aside," said Mr Justice Baker, who analysed the appeal at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London, said in a ruling.

"His reason for doing so is that he wants the record to be accurate.

"He says in particular he is concerned that if in due course (his daughter) were to read the judgment, she would get an untrue picture of his background.

"Although this is a point which may be thought to be of only marginal importance, nonetheless it seems to me right that the record should be correct."

Mr Justice Baker said Judge Owens' judgment related to a dispute between the man and his former partner, the girl's mother.

He said the girl lived with her mother and her parents disagreed how about how contact she should have with her father.

No-one involved has been identified.

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