In times of crisis, sometimes all that is needed is to be heard by someone who understands. James Cunningham, of the charity James’ Ark, has been that lifeline for others.
There are likely very few ex-prisoners who go to HMP La Moye for the first time as free men and feel nostalgic. James Cunningham is one of them.
Nowadays, the 41-year-old regularly visits the prison in his work for charity James’ Ark, but between the ages of 16 and 20 years old, he served several stretches in La Moye.
He recently learned that the section in which he was held, the young offenders wing, was being knocked down.
“I went in there as a lost little boy,” Mr Cunningham recalls. “When I was out I was off the rails. I was in shelters, on drugs, in trouble. It got to the point where I was close to ending it. Prison saved my life. I grew up in there. I got into the gym. I got back into my football. I got three meals a day,” he said.
Lived experience informs Mr Cunningham’s work at the prison today, where he advocates for inmates and works to help prisoners who are fathers connect with their children outside.
The James Ark website is replete with testimonies about Mr Cunningham’s work, but one of the most moving is from a father who lost contact with his son while serving a sentence in La Moye.
“I would like you to know that the only reason that my son sees his daddy is because of the work you do, and the only reason I see his smile and hear his laugh is because of the work you do. From me and my son, we thank you,” the anonymous inmate says.
As well as lived experience of life inside, Mr Cunningham also understands first-hand the difficulties of a breakdown in a relationship and a custody battle in the family courts.
His own relationship broke down five years ago, an experience that led to setting up the charity.
“In the end, I got a good outcome for my family. But going through it I was stressed as hell. It was traumatic,” he said. “I’d always been a hands-on dad. I’d always been heavily involved in my daughter’s life. But going through this, I had nowhere to turn for help.
“When I was going through it I was on the phone all the time. I was going up the wall. I thought: ‘Am I going insane?’ I thought: ‘There needs to be something for somebody going through this.’ ”
James’ Ark was set up in 2020 and Mr Cunningham remembers that the first call he received had him sprinting to the phone. “Last year,” he says, “we had 3,597 calls.” When he says “we,” he means “I”. Although James’ Ark now has an administrator and Mr Cunningham has enough sponsorship to at least draw a salary, it has always been a one-man show.
“It’s heavy-duty stuff. I’ve spoken to people that have been walking around with nooses in their bag. I’ve spoken to people that have been on cliff edges: no exaggeration. I’ve talked to people in dire need. I’d like to hope I’ve talked some of them down,” he said.
He recalls turning up at the house of one individual to take him out for a walk. “I just randomly knocked on his door. He said that saved his life,” he said.
“When you’re going through this type of stuff. You’ve lost your relationship. You’ve lost your house. You’ve lost your child. A lot of people also lose their jobs: then they lose their minds.”
Mr Cunningham firmly believes that there is bias against fathers across the Island’s services, and that it is contributing to a state of affairs that does not get enough attention: fatherlessness.
The vast majority of men that Mr Cunningham helps in prison grew up without a father, and, more often than not, fathers that he is helping have lost touch contact with their sons, not their daughters. Fatherlessness cascades down through the generation, from father to son to father to son.
“Why is it that the boys are the ones losing? I brought on five new cases recently, and they all had boys. One of them had four boys, one of them had two boys. And then you look at the prison system: they say 76% of prisoners come from fatherless homes,” he says. “There is a pattern here. Why aren’t we doing anything about it? Why aren’t people diving on this? I feel like I am doing it on my own.”
Mr Cunningham’s parents divorced when he was 12 and he grew up with his father. He remembers him as a strong role model, a disciplinarian. And despite his wayward late teenage years, Mr Cunningham thinks it was his father’s influence that helped him turn his life around.
My dad was always quite hard on me. I was a tearaway, but he was the one who could handle me,” he said. “But being raised by a father, I think I turned out pretty well. I haven’t touched any alcohol or drugs since I was 20 years old.”
Last year, James’ Ark helped 33 cases stay out of the family courts by engaging with separated couples at an early stage. And it is telling that although James’ Ark is mostly known for its work with fathers, the three most recent endorsements on his website are from mothers. He stresses that James’ Ark exists for families, not for fathers alone.
“I think that’s been really important, building the trust [of mothers] and not telling them: ‘This is what you need to do’. If I push someone into a corner, it’s not coming from them, so it’s not going to work,” he said.
Having made contact with a mother of a child whose father is estranged, Mr Cunningham might first ask what the father needs to do to win her trust. Maybe it is regular letters, followed by video calls. Maybe it is then a home visit, eventually a sleep-over. In often highly tense and toxic situations, Mr Cunningham’s role is most often as a mediator.
Sometimes it is practical advice, again gained from his own experience as a father going through an acrimonious separation. Sometimes it can be as simple as advising men what not to say, particularly over email. In this, Mr Cunningham draws from his own experience.
“I used to just react to emails when I was going through court, right? I used to be straight on it: respond, often in an aggressive manner, copying a bunch of people in,” he said. “I say to these guys now: Don’t send that email. Give it 24 hours, 48 hours, a week. Or send it to me first and I’ll check it,” he says. “Whether they follow advice is a different question, of course.”
Sometimes too, it is not sugar-coating the message to fathers, being willing to tell it how it is. “
If I’ve got a dad who’s speaking to me, I’m going to be straight with him. I’m going to tell him the truth. You know, there’s been cases where they don’t want to hear it, and I’ve had to challenge their behaviour. Maybe it has been toxic or abusive and I have to say: “Well, look at the message you are sending there, that’s abusive”. And they say: ‘Well, yeah, I guess it is’.”
“To be fair, a lot of them will take it. I’d say there’s only been, off the top of my head, in the years I’ve been doing this, I’m going to say about five to eight dads that have disengaged.”
At a time when there is a sharp focus on toxic masculinity and its impact on women and society at large – an overdue one, many would argue – an advocate for fathers and men in general may seem as running contrary to the zeitgeist.
But Mr Cunningham stresses that what he – and many other men – want to see is equality, nothing more and nothing less. He’d like to see, for example, an end to the toxicity of the family courts, where battles between spouses, often spurred on by lawyers, encourage acrimony when it comes to custody negotiations.
The courts, Mr Cunningham says, should have 50/50 shared custody as a starting point, and there should be clear and defined reasons as to why fathers should not have access to their children. That is not the case at the moment.
“As a man and as a father, you want to be working towards fair or close to fair. That’s it. I think that’s what a lot of fathers and men want. It’s working together, really, isn’t it? Men and women. I feel that’s where we’ve lost our way,” he said.
As the father of both a daughter and a son, Mr Cunningham is keen to stress that he supports both mothers and fathers through the process, and wants to see a system where both are treated better.
“I would love to meet with other agencies that support women, and actually say: ‘Right, what are your struggles? Because these are our struggles. How can we work together?’ But some agencies haven’t wanted to do that.”
Outside the big picture, Mr Cunningham has had incredible successes. Last year, James’ Ark connected over 100 children to their fathers in 2024, as well as supporting mothers that had lost access to their children.
Notable cases include reconnecting three fathers with their children after four, five, and six years of no contact. In another case, a father in Australia was able to reconnect with his child in Jersey after 14 years.
After zero contact, one father he has advocated for is having sleepovers with his child. “He didn’t see his son for six years and, naturally, the mum was quite anxious. But you know what? They’re actually co-parenting now. They’re actually messaging each other, arranging pick-ups, drop-offs. That’s an amazing result.”
Looking back, Mr Cunningham recalls how his own parents struggled with addiction, and were unable to raise him and his siblings.
When he was around eight years old, they got sober and fought social services to get custody of their children. That experience, back in the recesses of his earliest childhood, drove him to beat his own addiction. And still drives him today.
“My parents turned their lives around. We were kids and they fought to get us back,” he said.
“I have always found that an inspiration.”
As we speak, there is banging coming from upstairs. Mr Cunningham’s daughter is off school and sorting out her room, throwing away old toys and clothes.
Among the things she found are the puppets, Howard and Sue, that Mr Cunningham made to entertain the-then six-year-old during video calls when he couldn’t see her during the Covid pandemic.
They were hard times, times he will probably never forget, but the puppets are what his daughter remembers, dancing away on the iPhone screen to music on calls with her father.
She may be too old for puppets now, but she still won’t throw them away. It is something he encourages fathers in prison or not in physical contact to do to this day.
“You need to get into the child’s brain and make it as fun as possible, because you can still have a relationship, even if you’re apart. My daughter remembers all that stuff, and they’re good memories,” he said. “Nice memories about a difficult time.”
