Bob Geldof attacks family court over treatment of Peaches and Fifi: Singer says rulings made it impossible to take care of his children after he split from Paula Yates
- After 1995 split from Yates judges ruled she should take children with her
- It left Geldof, 63, only permitted to see them once a fortnight at the start
- Mother-of-two Peaches Geldof, 25, died from a heroin overdose in April
- Fifi, 31, revealed struggle with depression, drugs and alcohol in August
Bob Geldof has blamed Britain’s family courts for the emotional pain suffered by his daughters Peaches and Fifi.
Mother-of-two Peaches, 25, died from a heroin overdose in April, while 31-year-old Fifi revealed a lifelong struggle with depression, drugs and alcohol in August.
Now, Boomtown Rats singer Geldof, 63, has claimed the courts made it impossible for him to take care of his daughters following his separation from their mother, Paula Yates, in 1995.
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Family: Bob Geldof with his then-wife Paula Yates with their daughters Fifi (left) and Peaches (centre) in 1989
Family man: (From left) Fifi, adopted daughter Tiger Lily, Pixie and Peaches with their father Bob in London in October 2005
Judges ruled that their mother should take the children with her, leaving Geldof only permitted to see them once a fortnight at the start. He said he was ‘ruined’ when he was left by Yates.
Geldof told Saga Magazine: ‘I blame the entire family court system for so much of their subsequent pain. All I wanted was to see my kids 50 per cent of the time.
‘I wouldn’t have had children if I didn’t want the privilege of bringing them up, and I wanted to keep my kids away from this decadent world Paula had fallen into.
‘The courts, of course, prevented that as much as possible and I got them every two weeks, having been with them every day since they were born.’
New couple: Paula Yates and her partner, singer Michael Hutchence, in Sydney in 1996 with their baby Tiger Lily
He claimed that if he had left Yates with the children he would have been arrested for kidnapping.
Geldof later won shared custody before securing primary custody in 1998. At that time Yates had suffered a breakdown caused by the death of her new partner, INXS singer Michael Hutchence.
By then Fifi was 15, Peaches was nine and Pixie was eight. Geldof then also adopted Tiger Lily, Yates’s daughter with Hutchence, reported The Times journalist Rosemary Bennett.
Last week Geldof said he blames himself for the death of Peaches, adding that he ‘goes over and over and over’ what he could have done to help her after she started using the drug again in the months leading up to her death.
He described the journalist, model and television presenter as ‘super bright’ but ‘frantic’. Peaches was found dead by her husband Tom Cohen at their home in Wrotham, Kent, on April 7.
Undercover: Adopted daughter Tiger Lilly, Pixie and Peaches applaud as their father receives the Freedom of Dublin City in 2006
Out and about: Geldof with his daughters Pixie [left], Peaches [right] and Tiger Lily [front right] and his godson Lewis in 2003 (left), and Geldof with Peaches [middle] and Pixie [right] and a Labrador dog in 1996 (right)
An inquest in July heard that Peaches had started using heroin again in February, after taking the substitute drug methadone for two and a half years.
Father and daughter: Sir Bob Geldof and Peaches Geldof at London Fashion Week in February 2009
Coroner Roger Hatch said she took a fatal dose of high-purity heroin shortly before she was found dead. At the time of the tragedy Kent Police said the death was ‘sudden’ and ‘unexplained’.
But her husband told the inquest he had seen Peaches flushing drugs she had hidden in the loft of their home down the toilet.
He found her body when he returned from a weekend away with the couple’s two-year-old son, Astala. Their one-year-old son Phaedra was in the house with his mother.
In August, Fifi spoke publicly for the first time to reveal her struggle with depression, how it started when she was just 11 during her parents’ divorce and how she never discussed it with her father.
She lost her mother to a heroin overdose as a vulnerable teenager, her sister Peaches to the same tragedy, and has fought her own battles with alcohol and drugs.
Now she is engaged, with a devoted pet dog and a steady job in PR. But she told the Mail on Sunday of a time when she was a child that she thought she was losing her mind.
Fifi said: ‘I woke up crying about everything and nothing. I remember thinking what the f*** is going on in my head. Why do I feel like this.
'I felt very confused as to what was going on in my mind. I thought I was going crazy. I was a generally happy child and all of a sudden I wasn’t and I didn’t know why. It’s confusing and it makes you feel quite lost within yourself.’
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