Coparenting

I am going to try my best to keep this brief but my life is a complicated mess, so I apologise in advance if this becomes hard to follow.
I have 5 kids. My youngest is nearly 2. Her dad and I are currently going through the process of mediation, however, he has been emailing me unnecessarily, attacking me and pushing for things outside of what we had agreed in mediation up until this point. He manipulates and lies about me and situations in his emails - which for the most part, I have ignored and asked many times for him to stop. He does not stop. He tells me he needs to take me to court and has made mediation very difficult, constantly pushing for more than I feel is appropriate for our daughter, given her age, his past and continuing behaviour, his past “parenting” of my older kids and his older 3 when they were in our care, and the fact that he has now moved just over an hour away. He was not a present father, despite not having a job for the last 7 months living together. While I was pregnant, he went off his antidepressant medication cold turkey (without notifying or even going back to his doctor) and his behaviour became extremely volatile, aggressive, controlling and manipulative to myself and the kids. He would lie, gaslight and stonewall us all, daily. He would smack both his 6 year old and my 4 year old for not eating “quick enough”, then close them in their room and leave them crying and hyperventilating, often smacking again to “stop the crying”. He would then control what the children could or couldn’t eat for the remainder of that day. He had his kids lying to me and then, when the truth came out, he accused them of being liars and swore he was not the one lying (even though by that point, he was blatantly lying). His ex wife also displays similar behaviour and they had multiple disputes over their 3 children and money after that point as well. His youngest used to tell me that if her dad and I ever broke up, she wanted to live with me. I tried very hard to get through to him to keep us all together, including counselling (individually myself and as a couple). His sister also tried to reach out and offer him help (she is a counsellor) after seeing his behaviour but he refused any help. She later helped to convince me I had to completely put an end to the relationship for the sake of my own kids and I slowly came to realise that it has been the best decision I could have made for myself and my kids. He refused to attend counselling as a couple after 1 session because he didn’t like the counsellor. I tried to get him to find a counsellor he did like, he refused this also. He refused to see or talk to anyone for himself either. Since separating, he stalked me through my security cameras, accessed some of my app accounts using my passwords he had saved in his phone, added specific songs to my Spotify playlists to get a message across and randomly kept showing up to beg me to take him back. I was eventually forced to block him on everything except email, so that we could communicate about our daughter and belongings and he eventually realised that there was no chance of reconciling but that’s when the nasty emails slowly started coming through.

He currently FaceTimes our daughter 3 nights per week and spends time with her at the park every weekend, for up to 3 hours (although he calls time after 1-1.5 hours), with me in the background for the time being, as she has never spent any time alone with him in the past and his previous behaviour is a major concern for me when it comes to our daughter’s wellbeing. This was agreed in mediation about 8 weeks ago and he has spent the weekend time with her on 6 occasions up until this point.

Our 22 month old is an extremely friendly and trusting little girl, so she has no problem interacting with him at the park, however, since the first time she spent the time with him, her sleep has become disrupted. She naps immediately after spending time with him and then wakes up panicked, screaming and calling out hysterically for me. Settling her for any sleep, day nap or night, has also become very difficult (we had a bedtime routine and she would then fall asleep in her cot on her own. She now cries and becomes hysterical if she can’t see me until she has completely fallen asleep, often seemingly being asleep, only to the open her eyes quickly, call out and scan the room for me).

We attempted a second mediation session the other day and I am now in a position where I have to come up with a new proposal for my ex to spend time with our daughter moving forward. He has made it clear that he will proceed to court if I do not give him what he considers to be “enough” (starting immediately, he wants both days of every weekend, even though he works every second Sunday. No sleepovers initially but sleepovers to commence in a few months). I cannot bring myself to “compromise” as far as he is asking me to at this point in time, based on the reasons mentioned above, however I have been told by the mediator that these reasons are not enough.

In the meantime, he keeps emailing me to put me down, lie about me and remind me that he has prepared an affidavit and is ready to proceed to court. I have recently spoken to the police about the emails because it has been causing me a lot of stress and anxiety but there isn’t enough to do anything about that either.

I feel like I’m in a constant state of panic. I can’t sleep, I feel nauseous all the time and just generally feel like I can’t even breathe properly anymore. Seeing him and hearing him on the phone while he FaceTimes our daughter 3 times per week is also becoming more and more of a trigger for the anxiety and I have no idea how to fix any of this anymore. What can I do to make him back off and stick to only emailing about things that are relevant to our daughter?

To be clear, I am not saying that he will never have time with our daughter at his house/on his own but I am concerned that it is still far too soon for this to be happening at this point in time, given the circumstances. I feel like I’m condemning my child to - at best - be subjected to verbal, emotional and psychological abuse by her dad if I send her to him on her own.. but these things are apparently not seen as a concern for a child. However, all I see around me is mental health support and awareness campaigns for adults. I’m struggling to comprehend how this is ok and I don’t even know what I’m asking here. I have already seen how these things can result in children growing up and needing counselling because of psychological, emotional abuse from a parent, with 2 of my older kids affected because their dad was and still is abusive in similar ways when he has his time with them. I also personally grew up in an abusive environment as a child, which carried through to my adult relationships. Why is there no way to better protect kids in these situations? Why are there no resources available until the damage is done and years of counselling are needed?