A woman has won an appeal after a family court judge ordered her to speak to an ex-partner found to have raped and abused her.
She is embroiled in a dispute with the man which is centred on their child.
The boy lives with the woman and the man wants to spend time with him.
A judge told her to talk to the man “directly” to agree a regime for contact – and a “child arrangements order” had been approved with her “apparent approval”.
But the woman challenged the order and told a more senior judge, at an appeal hearing, that she had , “felt intimidated and distressed”.
She said she “felt under pressure” to consent to arrangements she did not feel were in her son’s best interests.
Judge Emma Nott, who considered the woman’s appeal at a recent private court hearing in Reading, Berkshire, has upheld her challenge.
She has dismissed the child arrangements order, after concluding that the woman had not given “a free and informed consent to contact going ahead”.
Judge Nott has outlined detail of the case in a ruling published online.
She said the child at the centre of the case could not be identified in media reports.
Judge Nott said another judge had concluded, at an earlier hearing, that the man had abused and raped the woman.
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