A father whose ex-partner detests him so much that she refuses to let their four-year-old daughter see photos of him, failed yesterday in an appeal court attempt to win contact with her.
Lord Justice Thorpe, one of the country's most senior family judges, urged ministers to study the case, adding: "This case is illustrative of the dilemma that the courts face and is as extreme as any I have encountered."
The judge said the lack of court sanctions in cases where mothers refuse contact was "a major problem throughout the family justice system". At present, the only sanctions available are fining a mother or sending her to jail for contempt of court - a step judges are loath to take because it would deprive the child of its carer.
In a few extreme cases where mothers have deliberately alienated children from their fathers, judges have transferred the care of the children from the mother to the father.
A report to the lord chancellor from an advisory committee chaired by a high court judge, Mr Justice Wall, recommended a range of new powers to deal with difficult contact cases in February 2002, but no action has yet been taken.
The committee suggested early intervention, including information and parenting classes to help couples resolve contact disagreements, power for judges to send "implacably hostile" parents to a psychologist or psychiatrist, and a wider range of sanctions for breach of contact orders, including community service orders and probation with a condition of treatment.
The lord chancellor's department said it would be publishing a full response to the recommendations this summer.
Lord Justice Thorpe told the father, who comes from the Chelmsford area in Essex, that he had "every sympathy" with him over the "truly tragic" case, but that he could not overturn the total ban on contact that had been previously imposed at Chelmsford county court. "I can only end by expressing hope that sooner or later light will fall into the dark places and there will be a happier outcome than any I can see as we are sat here this afternoon," he added.
Earlier this year, Judge Ludlow ruled at the county court that it was in the "best interests" of the child not to see her father, because contact was making her mother depressed and anxious.
Outside court, the father, who has not seen his daughter for two years, said he was planning to take the case to his local MP and the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.
He said that he was still forced to pay maintenance for the girl through the child support agency.
"Financially I'm still the father but emotionally I'm not. I feel the courts have let me down and let my daughter down."
The father, who spent £12,500 in legal costs fighting for contact, but is now so in debt that he has had to represent himself, told Lord Justice Thorpe and Lord Justice Bodey that his ex-partner, who is on legal aid, was performing a "parentectomy".
Describing her "entrenched hostility" towards him, the father said she was succeeding in "alienating" their daughter from him. The mother refuses to even allow her daughter to look at photos of her father, and has objected when social workers have attempted to read letters from him, the court heard.
Lord Justice Thorpe at one point urged the mother's barrister, John Waters, to try to explain to her the importance of letting her daughter have at least some contact with her father. "The father is being denied an ordinary entitlement to experience his daughter's development," said the judge.
"It's also a tragedy for the child, who is being denied an ordinary right to know her father and develop understanding, interests and affection with him.
"It's a tragedy that sooner or later is going to blow up in the face of the mother. There's no reasonable prospect that she is going to be able to maintain this unreality."