seemingly without any concept or capacity of Human Rights to his own son while relishing all luxury and comfort to his second wife and her adult 50year old daughter. No one moment of human morality is extended to his own flesh and blood son,as Peter Carter stated at the Against Rape in Conflict "I don't think he knows what human rights are!" Well not to his son. His step daughter, the child of his best friend whose wife David Cocks married thus crushing the spirit and the soul of Robert Woods, Flora Woods father, and crushing Patricia Cocks,(his second wife's best friend) his first wife and the mother or three of his children still permitted to see him. Robert Wood had a break down and went to hospital and David Cocks visited him and said to a shattered Robert "Only my happiness matters. "He David Cocks saw his mother and stayed with his mother every weekend ,even though Patria hated going down, but David Cocks stated that was his right, yet his own son gets no such rights, only the right to be excluded and maligned without rhyme or reason without justice or humanity.
When the child was on a life support machine in agony with every breath David Cocks Q C Told Sir Derek Spencer He Couldn't care Less if his son died on a life support machine." I couldn't care less he is nothing to me I will never see him and no one can make me I couldn't care less if my own child dies," and off he went hunting at his country estate after he and finished drinking his champagne, locking the door of his large luxurious St Johns Wood House, worth millions. Sir Derek was shocked as the mother David Cocks young orphan pupil had no parents no money and was being thrown out of her one room garret. When she went to court he denied paternity on oath was found to be lying and the case was proved.
He said despicable things about the young mother and admitted he had tried to force her to have an abortion despite their being no legal reason and that it was entirely for his comfort and convenience.
David Cocks Q C " I am your Father." David Cocks Q C Told Sir Derek Spencer He Couldn't care Less if his son died on a life support machine
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| David Cocks Q C "I am Your Father" |
Though in Hansard he was held to be the 6th highest paid prosecutor earning for prosecuting people £500,000 he paid his son only £16.24 a week that after a year resisting paying a penny or seeing his son at al or speaking to the mother his young orphaned pupil who he had had an affair with for a year.
David Cocks Q C Told Sir Derek Spencer He Couldn't care Less if his son died on a life support machine. He was told by Sir Derek the child was fighting for his life he said he couldn't care less and he would never see him.
He gave the mother £16.24 pence a week and tried to pay in arrears saying he would be entitled to pay on the 365th day of the year.
He gave the mother £16.24 pence a week and tried to pay in arrears saying he would be entitled to pay on the 365th day of the year.
Eminent QC David Cocks fought against providing for his love child. By Keith Dovkants. Evening Standard.
David Cocks skill at the bar made him a multimillionaire, with a country estate and a fine house in London. He was the toast of his profession, yet, in one area of his private life, Cocks behaved like the cad in a Victorian melodrama. Having seduced a young woman who became his pupil, he spurned her and the son she bore him. For more than 30 years Cocks fought battle after battle against maintenance orders, denying his own child and causing the distress for the woman who had loved him.
The court warfare has come to an end. Felicity his former lover, has accepted £100,000 for David which Cocks has agreed to pay to fund their son's postgraduate studies and help launch his career as an archaeologist. The money draws the line under a story filled with pain and now for the first time since the settlement, Felicity reveals the disturbing truth of the past 30 years.
Her account, supported by the evidence of one of Cock’s oldest friends, an eminent lawyer, former MP and Solicitor General, often seems inexplicable.
It was a late winter's day when she exchanged glances with Cocks across a room in the Royal Courts of Justice. She was in her early 20s, a bright and attractive woman who had struggled against family hardship to reach the beginning of a career at the Bar. He was 14 years older, already a success, wealthy and, everyone agreed, destined for great things.
That fleeting look was to lead to a love affair, but when Felicity told Cocks she was pregnant everything changed: “He said if I didn't have an abortion I was on my own.” And so it proved.
As David Cocks QC rose to the heights of his profession, he turned on his child and its mother with the cruelty that seems scarcely credible. Cocks first denied his son, then spurned him and fought against maintenance orders.
As the child was born, into a single parent's home with one-bedroom, and he threw a champagne party at his St John's Wood house for his legal friends to celebrate another good year at the Bar.
Felicity recalls to this now with a calm detachment. She was orphaned as a child and brought up by her grandfather, Admiral Leonard Blackler but he died when she was 16. She was forced to fend for herself. Despite having no family or parental home, she secured a place at prestigious University College. “I had to fund my own way through college. I had this burning ambition to be a lawyer and nothing was going to stop me. When I was called to the Bar, I felt I was on my way,” she says. She was a pupil in chambers at Pump Court and was with her pupil master that day at the High Court when she caught Cocks’ eye.
“He was this Olympian figure, tall, good-looking and very successful. When he invited me out to lunch I was really flattered. He invited me to lunch every single day during the case and said: “Come and be my pupil. You'll make a lot of money and have a brilliant career.”
Felicity moves to his chambers at five King's Bench Walk. “One night he turned up at my flat in Doughty Street with a bottle of champagne. He told me he loved me. I couldn't believe anyone so wonderful could care about me. I was absolutely amazed. When he kissed me the stars exploded. I was in love, really in love.”
When Cocks told her he was married, with three children, it made no difference. They holidayed together in Wales; spent days working side by side and evenings together. As the year ended, she learnt she was pregnant.
Cocks urged her to have an abortion. “He said if I did we could carry on as we were. I was desperate. This was a child conceived in love, I couldn't destroy it. He said if I insisted on having a baby I would have to leave his chambers, he couldn't risk his career. At one point he rang me at 6 a.m. and shouted down the phone: “You have wrecked my life: if I see you again I’ll wrecked yours!”
She was not without friends. The poet Robert Graves, whom she knew through a family link, invited her to his home on Majorca. He became godfather to her son and provided practical and emotional support. So did Cocks’ close friends Bill Marshall, a future deputy attorney general of Hong Kong , and Derek Spencer, later Sir Derek Spencer QC, the Conservative MP and Solicitor General.
Marshall and Spencer were appalled by their friend’s treatment of his ex-mistress. The two men tried to persuade Cocks to set up a trust fund for the child. Cocks later denied paternity. Sir Derek was astonished at his attitude and paternity was proved in court. But as Felicity's pregnancy progressed and she was unable to work, she was in financial difficulty.
Spencer and Marshall stepped in and gave her £200 each. When her child was born she named him David and took him to her flat in Albany Street, NW1. At 18 months old, David contracted pneumonia.
In one of the many court battle is over maintenance for David, Sir Derek gave a statement. In it, he recalled learning that the boy was dangerously ill and taking the news to Cocks. “The conversation took place in our room in Chambers and I remember it vividly,” Sir Derek said. “He said words to the effect that he wasn't interested, but it was no concern of his: that he was never again see the child will have anything to do with it.”
Young David survived and, with his mother working as a barrister, they moved to a two-bedroom flat in Camden, a former council property which is still their home. She worked to support them and Cocks contributed to the boy's education, grudgingly it seemed.
Cocks became one of the most sought after barristers in London, on one case he earned £100,000, plus £550 a day refresher fees. He acquired 173 acre estate in Devon, yet fought against idea of providing for his son. When David was the baby and magistrate ordered Cocks to pay £25 a week maintenance.
“ He said would give it as a lump sum on the 360 day of the year,” Felicity recalled “ Luckily the court said the child could not eat in arrears, and he was ordered to pay the money monthly.” When it came, it was not £25, but £16.24 a week. Cocks deducted tax.
Later she was awarded higher sums and, eventually, £100,000 a year. But she says, money was never the most important issue.
The rejection by David's father hurt him deeply, she says. In one of the many legal fight, Cocks tried to have their son made a ward of court because he said he was opposed to private education and Felicity was sending David to a fee-paying school, Hill House in Knightsbridge. He lost the case.
“I have never brought these court actions,” she said.” He has always instigated them and I have being forced to act. He is a powerful figure, with a lot of influence and wealth, and it felt as if he was using that to squash me. David knew what was happening and I was always desperately worried that he was being deeply wounded emotionally.”
“Being spurned by his father was the worst,” she said. Though he sends his father a birthday and Christmas card, nothing is received in return. As a child he knew his father was a keen horseman and took to sleeping with a toy horse under his pillow. Then, when he was 13, his father made contact. He pushed a note through the door, addressed to David, telling him he would pick him up to play squash at 8 a.m. that Sunday.
Felicity knew Cocks was a champion squash player and she dared to hope that now, at last, he wanted a relationship with his son. He picked the boy up and took him to the squash court.
“ He systematically thrashed him. David had never played before.” Felicity says “ it was a massacre. He took delight in beating the boy to the point where you could hardly stand up, but he forced on to go on.” Cocks took David for a squash outing once every nine weeks for a number of months, then the meetings petered out, as David put it.
Soon after this, there were more attempts to stop maintenance payments. After yet another failure by Cocks in the courts, Felicity took David to Austria for a holiday. While they were away, Cocks applied to his legal costs-which were estimated at £35,000-to be paid by her, despite the fact he had lost a case. When the news reached Felicity in Austria she collapsed. She was later diagnosed with a thrombosis that travelled to the brain and he was airlifted back to Britain, dangerously ill.
She recovered, but her health prevented him from returning to work as a barrister. She received incapacity benefit but now hopes to return to the Bar. “I had built a career but it seemed every move I made was dogged by these legal battles over money,” she said. “It was just more change to him-nickels and dimes. Once, an envelope arrived on David's birthday with his father's handwriting on it. He was very excited and opened it. It was a letter saying he wanted to decrease maintenance.”
Then, just before last Christmas Cocks served a summons, just as Felicity and her son were preparing for the festivities, “It was a devastating blow,” she says. “David had been ill and was just getting better. We were looking forward to Christmas, then the summons arrived. That year his father was named in the House of Commons as sixth highest paid prosecuting barrister in England. I was struggling to make ends meet and the summons was seeking to stop the maintenance payments.”
the case was finally adjudicated at Wells Street magistrates Court last week. The details cannot be reported the legal reasons but Cocks agreed to pay £100,000 as a final settlement. He later described the sun as “generous.”
“ I hardly find it generous for a man to abandon his son and then to fight tooth and nail all through his life against supporting him,” Felicity said. “ But the money wasn't the most important part of the agreement. It was also agreed that he would make contact with David and have a relationship with him. That was what I wanted more than anything, but him to be a father to his son.”
So far no meeting has been arranged. David Cocks Q C Told Sir Derek Spencer He Couldn't care Less if his son died on a life support machine/David Cocks Q C " I am your Father." David Cocks Q C Told Sir Derek Spencer He Couldn't care Less if his son died on a life support machine
Though in Hansard he was held to be the 6th highest paid prosecutor earning for prosecuting people £500,000 he paid his son only £16.24 a week that after a year resisting paying a penny or seeing his son at al or speaking to the mother his young orphaned pupil who he had had an affair with for a year.
David Cocks Q C Told Sir Derek Spencer He Couldn't care Less if his son died on a life support machine. He was told by Sir Derek the child was fighting for his life he said he couldn't care less and he would never see him.
He gave the mother £16.24 pence a week and tried to pay in arrears saying he would be entitled to pay on the 365th day of the year.
He gave the mother £16.24 pence a week and tried to pay in arrears saying he would be entitled to pay on the 365th day of the year.
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