By Stephen Green
(Update 22nd November 2016: At the latest hearing yesterday, instead of agreeing to a plan to return the children forthwith, the local authority opposed it. There will now be a contested hearing in early March 2017. So the injustice and the emotional harm being done to the children by Bexley continues, at least until then.)
In an astonishing development, a London Borough Council has told four children unjustly taken into care that they are opposing their parents’ court application to have them returned.
The news, delivered by a Bexley Council social worker last month, resulted in the couple’s eldest daughter trying to commit suicide.
The case is due to be heard on Friday 24th June 2016 at Bromley County Court.
CHRISTMAS RUINED BY SOCIAL SERVICES
The distressing case of how these children came to be in care was the subject of a video we published on YouTube on Christmas Day 2015, entitled Christmas Ruined by Social Services. To date the video (linked above) has had over 93,000 views. It is the second-most-viewed UK YouTube video about injustice by social services endorsed by the family courts.
The family’s nightmare started when their eldest boy, in his mid-teens, ran off after being caught out in a lie about his whereabouts.
Upon being picked up by the police, he reported his parents for child cruelty. All four children were instantly taken into care and the parents were charged and sent to the Crown Court. The only corroborating evidence was that of a doctor who saw a photo of a mark on the eldest boy’s body and concluded it could have been made by a metal implement. He never examined the boy himself, and none of the other children made any similar accusation. The police found nothing resembling such an alleged item in the family’s home.
PLEAD GUILTY, SAID JUDGE
Bexley social worker Judy Simon even contacted the mother’s place of work, a care home, resulting in her being laid off, and the father’s employers, British Transport Police. He was laid off on full pay and was later dismissed in another miscarriage of justice. He is appealing that dismissal.
Judge Diane Redgrave sitting in Bromley Family Court gave the astonishing advice to the parents to plead guilty in the Crown Court. She said this would help them have their children returned. The system, it appears, cannot cope with parents who are innocent. If they admit guilt, ‘experts’ can ‘work’ with them to ensure their parenting lines up with white middle-class prejudices, which crucially, and in flat contradiction to the law of the land, insist on no forms of physical chastisement whatever.
But these parents had not done what was alleged, and on the eve of the Crown Court case, their eldest son admitted he had made it all up. Despite the social worker screaming at him to attend court, he refused to go. In July 2015 his parents were duly acquitted. Lest anyone be in any doubt of what this means, it means they were found not guilty and left the court without a stain on their character.
BEXLEY SHOULD HAVE APOLOGISED
A reasonable man would expect two things to happen. Firstly, he would expect Bexley’s Judy Simon to contact both parents’ place of work at once to tell them all suspicion was lifted.
Secondly, he would expect an apologetic Bexley immediately to reunite the children with their parents. All the children have told the Children’s Guardian they want to return home.
But none of that occurred. Instead, Bexley’s head of child protection, Jacqui Tiotto, threatened this author with contempt of court and told him it was up to the parents to make an application to the court.
That they have now done, but Bexley Social Workers are unaccountably sticking to their line and refusing to let the children go. Such callousness by a public authority resulting in continuing serious emotional harm to the children is nothing short of a national disgrace.
READ: Gen 1:28; Psalm 127:3-5, 128:6; Mal 4:6.
PRAY: That the children are returned, the father reinstated and that the mother gets her job back. Thank God that we have been able to help the parents by letting them tell their story. Pray now for a positive outcome to the hearing on Friday 24th June.
WATCH: The video: https://youtu.be/CaBczpK7HOM
WRITE or Email The Mayor of the London Borough of Bexley, Councillor Sybil Camsey, Civic Offices, 2 Watling Street, Bexleyheath, Kent, DA6 7AT. Phone 020 3045 5280. Email: councillor.sybil.camsey@bexley.gov.uk Stress that Mr & Mrs M have done nothing wrong; they were acquitted last July in the Crown Court. Ask her why Bexley did not return their children last July? Why they did not immediately inform Mr & Mrs M’s places of work that there is not a stain on their character? Ask what possible reason there can be for Bexley still to be causing harm to the children by opposing their return.
