I sent a friend of mine, a child psychologists, earlier today those messages and explained a bit the background. For those who are interested, her response:
-She thinks they are unlikely to be written by a 12 year old, especially in the alleged scenario, but can't rule it out obviously (tbh I think no one of us thinks that Alice isnt glued next to them whenever they write with him lol)
-Ioan's messages are fine for boundary setting and to discipline her
-she also think it's good to teach kids that the needs of other parties have to be considered in life
-if the kids do think that his partner is responsible for the parents' seperation it can be slightly problematic to bring them up in this context, sometimes a little lie helps
-she thinks the "this is not a kind and loving relationship" bit was unfortunate choice of words, if recent he should contact her asap to clarify what he means and that everything will be fine
-her biggest issue is that they communicate over text, kids dont have the ability yet to understand that there are limitations re: tone
-she obviously also thinks Alice is a cunt for making this a public show (probably every professional thinks that lol)
I think in this context it doesn’t look great.
Boundary setting is right but it’s just not the kind of thing you do over text with a child. A kid will interpret that as straight rejection.
Put the shoe on the other foot, if she’d have “hacked” into Alice’s IG account and posted shit about her mum and Alice straight out (over text no less) said she would not be taking her daughter anywhere or see her and guilted her about newspapers I think I’d be pretty taken aback. You don’t punish your children by refusing to see them. In fact, if you wanted to be the bigger parent you’d basically just say “you can hack into my Instagram, you can threaten what ever you want but I am your father and nothing will stop me loving you. I’m here. But we need to talk because what you did was serious and we can’t carry on like nothing happened, but let’s do it in person just you and me because I miss you and want to see you.” You still establish boundaries, you still discipline them but the aim is to establish trust and not break it, to build confidence and not shame. To be the reasonable parent who they can rely on, not the one that shuns them.
Like, he has to know that the children have been poisoned against him at this point and that their behaviour is a reflection of their mother and not them. Punish the mother, don’t punish the children.
If your children are still arseholes when they’re adults, by all means treat them like the adult arseholes they are, but while they’re minors they need unconditional love and security and it’s possible to do that AND discipline them and set boundaries. The minute you withdraw love you’re headed for disaster.
disclaimer: AE is 10x worse but it’s possible that he’s not acted in the best way as well, no one is perfect. Also, the messages Alice has released I’m sure are curated so I’m sure he’s not like that 100% of the time but the style of those messages just give me a few red flags.
the thing is she also threatened him with CPS, has a mom who told her "tell me if daddy is creepy", acted out terribly (likely coached) when in his custody that got immediately filmed by the mother. I honestly think he is not safe around her until a professional ensures that she is not getting coached, yknow?
We've also been told that they dont take his phone calls, so it may not be as easy as we think.