P.S. (26th October 2016): Walsall’s barrister, Mr Richard Hadley, today undertook to complete his examination of all the evidence by next week. He gave Mr Justice Keehan, sitting in the High Court in Nottingham, the clearest possible indication that he expects there to be no case of abuse to answer.
In that event, he said Walsall would withdraw its application for adoption and long-term fostering orders for the children and return them to their parents, even before the further, and it may the final, hearing listed for 18th November.
So we apologise for suggesting below that Mr Hadley was dithering. He just did not have all the information. It does remain however that every day a child remains without justification in the ‘care’ of a local authority is a day of state-inflicted emotional harm too long.
Original article continues below:
A local authority is dithering over whether three children in its care can return home. Walsall Council’s barrister, one Mr Richard Hadley, has not found time to re-examine the case a full five weeks after undertaking to do so.
Meanwhile, the children continue to suffer the emotional harm of remaining in foster care.
The family were torn apart last year by allegations of sexual assault made by a small girl who had been staying with them. The family’s younger children were taken into care, where they remain to this day.
Meanwhile, their two eldest sons were charged with a number of sexual offences. But in their trial, held in August, it emerged the girl concerned had been watching pornography with a twelve-year-old girl next door to her father’s house. Her story was self-contradictory, medical evidence did not support her allegations of rape and forensic evidence did not assist.
Some charges were dropped and the two were acquitted of the rest.
At the next family court hearing on 14th September, Walsall’s barrister, Mr Richard Hadley of Birmingham’s No5 Chambers, admitted the council did not know that the girl had been corrupted in that way. The Council’s social worker had also misrepresented whatever evidence the council did have to the family court and denounced the children as abusers.
After a meeting with the defence solicitor from the criminal case, Mr Michael Phillips, now representing the father in the family court, the local authority’s barrister, Richard Hadley, undertook to re-examine the whole case.
But at a hearing yesterday in front of a high court judge, The Hon Mr Justice Michael Keehan QC sitting in Nottingham, Mr Hadley had to admit he had not looked at the evidence. He said he was still waiting for some to come from the police that very day.
We had expected better from someone whose profile at Birmingham’s No5 Chambers says he is ‘particularly skilled at unravelling complicated medical evidence’ and that he is also ‘regularly instructed in high profile cases involving the most serious of injuries, sexual abuse and fabricated or induced illness’.
The Judge told all parties to come back in a week’s time, when he will also hear this writer’s application to name the social worker in the case.
Please pray for some alacrity to enter into this case. Pray for Mr Hadley to look at the case this weekend and pray for justice to be done.
Note 1: In not a single case I have covered in the family court has a local authority ever admitted that keeping children in its care itself causes serious emotional harm.
Note 2: The judge, Mr Justice Keehan, is highly experienced in family court cases and was highly paid as a barrister, earning £458,981 from legal aid alone in 2012.
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