My parents separated when I was two years old and for nine years, my mum, encouraged by the family courts, tried to stop me seeing my Dad.

I would stay with him for four days a month and was eventually allowed 10 minutes on a Wednesday evening to talk to him over the phone. Yet my Dad had to go to court and fight to achieve this. Why should my Dad have to fight to be able to speak to his daughter?

I never understood why I could not be with him. I used to think that I was the problem, I had caused this hell upon my family and I would cry myself to sleep at night, missing my Dad, confused and lonely. I had no one to talk to as I was cruelly taught by the…