Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Access Denied cover art

Access Denied

By: David E. Gates
Narrated by: David E. Gates
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £11.99

Buy Now for £11.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Mummy Where Are You?: Revised Edition, New cover art
A Mother's Story cover art
Amelia's Story cover art
How to Stand Up to Workplace Bullying and Take On an Unjust Employer cover art
Coming up for Air cover art
Four Seasons of Loneliness cover art
The Namedropper cover art
Face of a Bigamist cover art
How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty cover art
I Miss Mummy: The true story of a frightened young girl who is desperate to go home cover art
Part-Time Working Mummy cover art
Madeleine cover art
Look What You Made Me Do cover art
Good Morning, Mr Mandela cover art
Beyond Belief cover art
Strictly Ann cover art

Summary

David meets Meg. They fall in love and, despite a turbulent relationship, have a child together fulfilling David's dream to be a father. 

After they separate, David has to fight the mother and Family Courts to see his daughter and also battles against the incompetence and lies of the Child Support Agency who seem hell-bent on ruining him, emotionally and financially. 

A must-listen for any parent. 

For anyone who has had to deal with the CSA/CMS and the Family Courts, this is compelling listening. Thought-provoking, honest, extraordinary, revealing. A damning indictment of the Child Support Agency and Family Courts. 

If the measure of a good audiobook is its afterburn, Access Denied is a great audiobook. 

When you've nothing left to lose, what else can you give? 

A quite extraordinary true story.

©2013 David E. Gates (P)2016 David E. Gates

What listeners say about Access Denied

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Hearts of Steel

It’s very rare that a book has an effect on me as substantial as Access Denied. Earlier I sat down to listen to the opening few chapters and a little over four hours later I’ve finished it. I have to put my cards on the table and say that I knew Dave, the author, in the early years of the story and have met the main characters. Sadly I lost touch with him while the extraordinary events actually unfurled. At the time I knew him this was a mundane story of a split modern family like thousands of others. That’s the honesty part over but note that this isn’t the Amazon Vine program I bought my copy without Dave even knowing about it.

That said, as I read the reviews on Amazon.co.uk it quickly became obvious that this book is touching all manner of people in similar ways. This is a story that describes the precious relationship between a father and daughter and shines a stark light on the sheer inhumanity of the government departments set up to manage things when they go wrong. It shows how fantastic relationships between people can be and how, when things break down they can get twisted into something awful. It brings us this beautiful relationship which is as strong as any parent-child bond but fatally flawed by a terrible lie that underpinned it.

Dave chose to narrate this book himself and he does a very decent job of it. Why five stars though? Well this is a story you need to hear from him, understanding that the guy talking is the guy being talked about gives this a genuine authenticity. Dave doesn’t paint himself as a saint, he doesn’t pretend that he was perfect and in fact I wonder if the verbatim communications included reveal more than he realises. The real point is though that this is an ordinary guy being put through hell by a situation so unnecessary and seemingly so unreal.

So, my review undoubtedly has bias in it but read the Amazon reviews and you will see that this is a genuinely powerful book. It’s a book that reveals much about modern life and will have you both tearful and angry by the end. Even if you have a heart of steel, this ought to melt it or at least soften the edges a bit.

Since finishing I’ve told Dave that I haven’t reacted to a book like this since reading To Kill A Mockingbird as a kid. Frankly the thought of bracketing the gobby but likeable git from Portsmouth I used to know with Harper Lee is ludicrous, but after reading “Access Denied” I *needed* a laugh!

Don’t hesitate with this one. Just get it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful