Southampton heads adoption lottery

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11 June 2018

Southampton City Council heads the adoption lottery

Research into adoption and care rates has revealed a postcode lottery. Children in some areas in England are 12 times more likely to be removed and adopted by child protection units.

The BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism sent Freedom of Information Act enquiries to all English local authorities. Half provided full responses. The BBC reported the results in this article. The data reveal significant variation in adoption rates.

Twelve times higher

For children born in 2011-12 the chances of being placed for adoption by the age of five were 12 times higher in Southampton than Greenwich.

Twenty authorities had significantly increased adoption rates compared with children born five years before.

Andy Bilson, emeritus professor of social work at the University of Central Lancashire, wanted to compare child protection practice across all local authorities in England.

He sent a series of detailed questions to all 152 bodies, asking how many children, born between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012, had by the age of five been investigated by social services, and how many had been permanently removed from their families, adopted or given placement orders by family courts. He asked the same questions about children born five years before.

Huge variation

Professor Bilson received full responses from 70 local authorities and used ONS data to calculate adoption rates.

The Southampton Coat of Arms is surmounted by a figure of justice.

This revealed a huge variation: in Southampton, almost one in 50 children had been adopted or had placement orders imposed. In Greenwich, which has a similar socio-economic profile, the rate was a twelfth of that – more like 1 in 600.

In Southampton there was a marked rise in adoption rates for the age group, compared with children born five years before. The FOI response also showed the authority had investigated many more families. The number of detailed investigations, carried out under section 47 of the children act, had risen from 215 to 454. There was a similar pattern in 19 other authorities.

Adoption promoted

For nearly 20 years, both Labour and Conservative governments have promoted adoption as a way of getting children out of care. Children, they said, often move from one foster family to another. They fare poorly in education. Some are abuse in care. Girls in care have figured highly in all the grooming scandals, from Rotherham, to Rochdale, to Bradford and Oxford. Outcomes for children in care are poor. Adopted children do much better than children in care.

The Blair Government set targets to get children into adoption. They gave local authorities financial incentives. All local authorities did was take more potentially adoptable children into care to chase the money. Children were too often taken by force from parents who wanted to keep their children. But the system was more interested in taking their children for financial gain than helping them to stay together as a family.

The mindset persists today. Professor Bilson found in the authorities where adoption had risen, the numbers in care had risen too. In authorities where adoption was stable or had fallen, care numbers had fallen.

“This is the exact opposite of what you’d expect,” he told the BBC. “It points instead to a difference in the way that children are being removed from parents.”

Southampton’s Blake Fowler

Blake Fowler's sad case drove social workers to take more children into care 'just in case'. — Blake Fowler’s sad case drove social workers to take more children into care ‘just in case’.

The BBC asked Southampton why it had changed its approach. The authority responded: “All children who were adopted were subject to rigorous scrutiny by the legal system and the Family Court, both of which agreed with the Local Authority that not only had the threshold for a Care Order been met, but that the Local Authority had exhausted all opportunity and support for any potential family or other carers: adoption was therefore the only realistic option.”

However, the BBC suggests another influence may be at work in Southampton. In 2011, there were four child deaths, one especially high profile. Blake Fowler died of a head injury aged seven. Concerns had been raised about him since he was a toddler: the authority were later severely criticised for failing to act.

Sir Mark Hedley, who for many years was a High Court judge in the Family Division, told the BBC: “It would be wrong to suggest that one is the cause of the other. But there is no doubt that public criticism of social workers if children have suffered will lead to an increased priority being given to child protection at the expense of maintaining family groups.”

Action varies

Social workers have to intervene if they believe a child is at risk of significant harm. But ‘significant’ is not defined in statute. Sir Mark says action will vary from one authority to another.

“There will inevitably be a wide range of views in relation to what is significant harm,” he said. “Just as there will be a range of views about the desirability of intervening in families in the first place.”

Professor Bilson found that far more children are being put on child protection plans because of “emotional abuse” and neglect – 82% of the children in the younger group. Again, these are terms which can be subject to interpretation.

Medway’s emotional abuse

Last year, Christian Voice uncovered wide discrepancies in practice for the ill-defined category of ’emotional abuse’. The Government’s most recent figures showed wide variations in numbers of children taken into care and reasons given. The discrepancy showed up widely in the contrast between the two councils in Kent. They were Kent County Council and Medway Council. We have been following some terrible cases of injustice in Medway.

Kent County Council took 1,049 children into care in 2015-2016. The population of Kent CC area at the last census was 1,541,900. Under 20’s were 360,605. So a Kent child has a 0.29% chance of being ‘in care’.

Medway Council took 539 children into care in 2015-2016. The population of Medway’s council area at the last census was 263,925. Under 20’s were 74,000. So a Medway child has a 0.73% chance of being ‘in care’.
In Kent County Council, 656 children were taken for neglect, 63% of the total and higher than the national average for England. The Council took 203 children for ‘emotional abuse’. That is 19%, lower than England’s national average.

But in Medway, 237 children (44%) were taken for neglect and 257 (48%) for emotional abuse. Given Medway’s far lower population, are we really being asked to accept that children in Chatham and Rochester are suffering ‘emotional abuse’ (whatever that is) over six times more than children in Canterbury and Ramsgate?

Dramatic picture

Over the last decade, the number of children in care has risen by 134%. That means for every four cases then there are seven now. Many talk of the crisis in the care system, the family courts overwhelmed by cases.

Why this happens is less clear, though council support for families, so-called early intervention, has been dramatically reduced thanks to cuts, and rising poverty increases the pressure. For many months now local authorities have been warning that more families are in crisis, and that child protection is becoming an emergency service.

Professor Bilson’s research provides a dramatic picture of varying approaches in different authorities.

Best interests of the system

The Department for Education said: “Every decision regarding adoption is made with the best interests of the child at its heart. Many children and their adoptive families have had their lives transformed by adoption, and we are determined to support them every step of the way.

“On top of this, there are of course a number of alternative options available, including long-term fostering and special guardianship, which may be chosen when it is best for the child.”

But many parents tell Christian Voice care decisions are too often made in the best interests of the system. We have seen outrageous injustice in what is now a child protection industry. Social workers, solicitors, barristers, court psychologists, even judges all depend on this industry for their income.

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Medway Council’s Emotional Abuse

By

Stephen

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11 September 2017

16

Sara Root was taken to court for contempt by Medway Council

A mother who says her two youngest children were wrongly taken into care by Medway Council was given a six-month suspended prison sentence at the end of last month by Judge Richard Polden

Sara Root told Christian Voice her children were taken seven years ago for ‘emotional abuse’.

District Judge Graham Green made a judgment which will concern home-schoolers up and down the land.. Medway satisfied the judge the son and daughter were suffering the said emotional abuse due to home schooling. This had given them, said Medway’s Ian Scrivens, a ‘skewed view of the world’. Despite attending a primary school, playing with other children and going out to the park and the cinema, they were not ‘socialising.’

Legal Statement

Sara Root was found guilty in July, as we reported at the time. But in July we did not feel able to identify the mother. Now that she has been sentenced, the court authorised this legal statement:

In relation to C00ME422. On 30th August 2017, at Maidstone County Court, His Honour Judge Polden sentenced Sara Root to a custodial sentence of six months, suspended for twelve months, for contempt of court. The basis of that sentence was that: (a) she had breached an injunction made under section 12 of the Administration of Justice 1960 on 13th December 2011 on ten occasions; (b) she was in breach of an undertaking she gave to the court on 12th December 2016; and (c) she failed to comply with reporting restrictions made at the same hearing. All of the breaches were occasioned by publishing material relating to care proceedings on Facebook and failing to remove it.

September hearing

Ms Root is now applying to the High Court to remove the injunctions. Her two children are now young adults aged respectively 18 and 19, she told Christian Voice. Therefore they are no longer subject to any care order. Not surprisingly, she would like to make contact with them again. But in a bizarre twist, Medway Council have applied for non-molestation orders on behalf of the two young adults. Their only evidence appears to be hearsay.

Social worker Kelly Hopper had to admit in court she was not even in touch with Ms Root’s children. Meanwhile, ‘support worker’ Lucy Conn has made a statement. We understand this discloses that the young man involved does not even want Medway Council to speak on his behalf. The case will be heard behind closed doors at the Royal Courts of Justice on 28th September.

Contempt removes some secrecy

The family courts are shrouded in secrecy. Those in social services and the child protection industry say this is to protect the children involved. But it also means parents cannot easily bring injustices to the light. The media are also loathe to report cases. Editors fear they may fall foul of contempt of court rules. So in practice, the secrecy rules protect the system.

The only reason Sara Root and Eugene Lukjanenko can be named is because Medway Council brought actions against them for contempt of court, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison. Family court judges still hear such cases. Nevertheless, the cases have to be held in open court in the civil court, rather than the family court. This is because the British legal jurisdictions do not ‘disappear’ people. Anyone facing jail must be named. This does not mean the media can then name any children involved, nor do we want to. But we can and shall name local authorities and social workers.

Medway Council rooftop protest

Eugene Lukjanenko was convicted of contempt at Canterbury County Court in January and July 2017

Meanwhile, concert pianist Eugene Lukjanenko occupied the porch roof of Medway Council offices in Chatham last week. He remains in dispute with Medway over access to his son in care. However, above all, he wants his son returned, and his son, who is 14, also wants to come home. With worrying similarities to the Sara Root case, Mr Lukjanenko also says his son his taken away for alleged ’emotional abuse’.

A group of people on the ground also protested against forced adoption & foster care. Two police cars were called to the protest, where four people were spotted handing out leaflets. A spokesman from the police said: ‘Officers have been made aware of a protest on a roof in Dock Road, Chatham. Officers were called to the scene at 7.21am on Tuesday 5 September 2017.’

One protester told the local KentOnline newspaper they were calling on the government to investigate the way in which children are taken into care.

Mr Lukjanenko came down from the roof voluntarily at 7.30pm. He was arrested on suspicion of aggravated criminal trespass and causing a public nuisance.

Earlier this year he was twice found in contempt of court for publishing details of case in social media. Mr Lukjanenko was sentenced to 56 days suspended for a year in January 2017 and again, for a separate offence, in July.

Emotional abuse in Medway Council area

The Government’s most recent figures show wide variations in numbers of children taken into care and reasons given. The discrepancy shows up widely in the contrast between the two councils in Kent. These are Kent County Council and, funnily enough, Medway Council.

Kent County Council took 1,049 children into care in 2015-2016. The population of Kent CC area at the last census was 1,541,900. Under 20’s were 360,605. So a Kent child has a 0.29% chance of being ‘in care’.

Medway Council took 539 children into care in 2015-2016. The population of Medway’s council area at the last census was 263,925. Under 20’s were 74,000. So a Medway child has a 0.73% chance of being ‘in care’.
In Kent County Council, 656 children were taken for neglect, 63% of the total and higher than the national average for England. The Council took 203 children for ‘emotional abuse’. That is 19%, which is lower than England’s national average.

But in Medway, 237 children (44%) were taken for neglect and 257 (48%) for emotional abuse. Given Medway’s far lower population, are we really being asked to accept that children in Chatham and Rochester are suffering ‘emotional abuse’ (whatever that is) over six times more than children in Canterbury and Ramsgate?

Or is something rather odd going on in Medway Council Social Services? And if it is, are we justified, to use the old Watergate expression, to ‘follow the money’?

Muslim Tower Hamlets foster carers in storm over Christian child

By

Stephen

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31 August 2017

0

Medway dispute Mother guilty of ‘contempt’

By

Stephen

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19 July 2017

9

A mother in dispute with social services was found guilty yesterday of contempt of court. The case has not yet concluded so we shall refer to her as ‘SR’.

Sitting at Maidstone County Court, in open court, Judge Richard Polden held ‘SR’ had breached an injunction forbidding her from naming her children and reporting on her case online.

Furthermore, she gave an undertaking last December to take down the articles and then changed her mind, he said. The articles remained up on her page on social media.

Sledgehammer to crack a nut

Sentence will be passed on 30th August, said His Honour. In accordance with the rules, he must name the mother in public at the conclusion of the case. Barrister Edward Elliott, representing Medway Council, objected to naming the mother even at that stage. He said that would enable the public to join up her case and the details already legally presented about it on this website with her social media page.

But this author, speaking as a journalist and member of the media, invited His Honour to have no sympathy with that argument. Ours is not a jurisdiction which ‘disappears’ dissidents. The rules say clearly that a person committed to prison, even if sentence is suspended, must be named. The Council should have thought of that before employing a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Medway ‘verging on vindictive’

The two ‘children’ Medway took are now nineteen and eighteen. Any orders passed under the Children Act no longer apply. Medway complained about breaches occurring while at least one of the children was still under eighteen. But they do not wish the mother to post anything even now about her treatment by Medway Council. Furthermore, that treatment, on the face of it, appears to have verged on vindictive, as our earlier story detailed. Accordingly, to try to stem the flow of embarrassing negative information about Medway Social Services, they wanted the judge to make a ‘non-molestation order’ in favour of the children.

But Judge Polden was not confident Medway could present such an application on behalf of persons who are now legally adults. The Council even expected him to take merely the evidence of social worker Kelly Hopper in support of it. But when Kelly Hopper gave evidence against the mother for contempt of court, she had to admit she was not even in contact with the son or daughter. She only had a chat with their ‘support worker’. So when she laid it on about the children being distressed about their mother’s actions, that was mere hearsay. Miss Hopper had her speech off pat. She did not even read from notes she might have taken when purportedly speaking to the support worker. Her evidence came across as frankly contrived. So His Honour sent that application up to a High Court Judge to decide in September.

Using the system against itself

The case exposes the problems faced by local authorities who want to shut parents up. There is a growing number of parents aggrieved by the loss of their children and the injustice they say they have faced in the family courts. They are beginning to gather together in social media groups. And they feel they have very little to lose. SR herself told the judge: ‘I’ve lost everything. Medway have destroyed my life and my family. Send me to prison if you want.’

The truth is, the establishment can only go down its given routes. Suppose a parent (or even this ministry) shares information contrary to Section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960, which forbids publication of ‘information relating to proceedings … under the Children Act 1989’. Or a parent (not this ministry) names their child on social media contrary to Section 97 of the Children Act 1989.

All the annoyed local authority can do is apply for the parent (or journalist) to be sent to prison. They only have that blunt instrument of a weapon. But employing it creates more publicity around the initial injustice.

Additionally, the parent must now be named in public. When a respondent shows no fear of consequences and desires the publicity, such sanctions play into their hands. They are, in the classic expression, ‘using the system against itself.’

A previous Mayor of Medway writes

After emailing our previous story on this case to Councillors in Medway, one Councillor Stuart Tranter responded. Cllr Tranter was Mayor until Cllr Wildey took over this year. What he wrote perfectly illustrates the complacency of those in charge of Medway Council:

‘I always welcome the truth, and if you believe something is wrong I suggest you use the courts and other proper means to have the evidence examined.’

Former Mayor of Medway, Councillor Stuart Tranter

No, Councillor Tranter, we are the media. We are part of the Fourth Estate, holding those in power to account. Those in power include local authorities, social workers, advocates, judges and indeed councillors. We are not going to court, and what ‘other proper means’ are there? Media is a ‘proper means’ and the only court we shall use is the court of public opinion.

He goes on: ‘Cllr Alan Jarratt (current leader) and Cllr David Wildey are good people working hard for our community, yet you imply they are running a council which sets out to harm innocent people. But living in Wales, I doubt you know them or how this council really works. We may be imperfect, but we do our best to get things right with the resources we have.’

Indeed, us humble sheep-rearing folk know nothing of the high-minded ways of the Home Counties. But we can spot an injustice when we see one. Furthermore, a local authority and its councillors should display more humility than ‘we may be imperfect’ and acknowledge their mistakes.

He that troubleth Israel!

Cllr Tranter continues: ‘I found all I read about you and your organisation and your beliefs negative and disturbing, so I must assume you thrive on causing disturbance which reinforces your beliefs and gives you energy. I hope that one day you get the help you need to find peace.’

Wow! When you lose the argument, try the ad hominem attack. Now who was it who said, ‘You are stirring up trouble!’ The idolatrous king Ahab said it to the Prophet Elijah. Here is the full discourse:

1Kings 18:17 And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? 18 And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim.

‘Baalim’ were false gods. Israel had departed from the laws of the Lord, just like Medway Council in stripping children from their parents because a house is untidy. Thanks for that, Councillor. And you will only find peace in the Lord Jesus, who told his followers:

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

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Medway Council took children because home ‘untidy’

By

Stephen

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13 July 2017

13

Councillor Alan Jarrett, leader of Medway Council

A local authority took two children into care because a house was ‘untidy’, a mother has told Christian Voice.

And now, seven years later, Medway Council are trying to send the mother to prison for speaking out about her case. This is despite both children now being over eighteen. Care proceedings end at eighteen.

Medway Council harmed boy with violent video games

Medway Council have a history of such intimidatory tactics against parents who refuse to play by the rules. Last month they brought contempt of court proceedings against a father for naming council employees on social media. Judge Richard Scarratt gave him 56 days suspended.

In January this year Medway Council also applied to send Eugene Lukjanenko to prison for naming his son. Judge Richard gave him his first 56 days, also suspended. Mr Lukjanenko says he was speaking out against the injustice he says both he and his son have suffered at the hands of Medway Council.

According to friends of the family, Mr Lukjanenko’s son suffered horrific emotional abuse at the hands of Medway Council after being taken into care following a one-off altercation with a neighbour’s child.

Medway Council allowed 'J' to watch video games which inspired Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik — Medway Council allowed ‘J’ to watch video games which inspired Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Breivik

If there was ever a case for a local authority working with a parent to keep a family together, this was it. But instead, Medway Council took J into care at huge cost to the taxpayer.

Whether that is down to resources or ideology we do not know.

Moreover, they encouraged him to watch violent video games, including one played by Norwegian neo-nazi Anders Breivik.

We cannot name Mr Lukjanenko’s son without being in contempt of court ourselves. As he is a minor, we do not wish to anyway.

We are only able to name Mr Lukjanenko because Medway brought committal proceedings against him.

‘Hired gun’ psychologist says home-schooling causes ‘harm’

Edward Elliott has represented Medway Council in at least two contempt of court cases against aggrieved parents.

In the present case, that of the mother, we are at liberty to name all parties, but will wait until next week’s court case before doing so. In the meantime, Medway’s barrister, Edward Elliott, boasts about his involvement in the Council’s committal proceedings against the mother. He calls her ‘SR’ which is how we shall refer to her.

Nevertheless, some disturbing factors of SR’s case should concern all of us. Medway’s case at the final hearing on 4th March 2010 was that SR had harmed her two youngest children by pulling them out of school. Her daughter ‘C’ has special needs, while her son ‘D’ is above average intelligence.

Medway Council hired chartered psychologist Mr Graham Flatman to dig up dirt on the family. His comments should alarm every home-schooling parent in the land. He contended SR ‘had provided (‘D’) only with a limited and possibly distorted social experience’ and had ‘missed the opportunities offered by school for extended social contacts, extra curricular activities and the benefit of experiencing how a society of children and adults can function’. He concluded, ‘He had therefore suffered harm.’ On this point, District Judge Graham Green found otherwise.

It is legal to home-school in the United Kingdom.

Uncooperative with professionals

Expert Witness Graham Flatman. His reports cost the taxpayer around £6,000 each and he can write six per month, so he has every reason to look cheerful.

Having failed on home schooling, Medway turned on SR herself. Mr Flatman said she was ‘narcissistic’. She had ‘no insight into the harm and neglect the children have suffered’. He said she ‘should not have the responsibility of caring for her children unless she progresses through treatment and support’. What ‘treatment’? He did not say. Could it involve keeping SR away from looking glasses and pools of water? Whatever treatment it might be, Mr Flatman will not be providing it. He is far too busy writing reports for the family court.

Mr Flatman also said SR, a single parent, was uncooperative with the professionals. These are people who wanted to remove her children from the family home. Many reasonable people might also be assessed as having ‘distorted and paranoid belief systems about authority figures’ in such circumstances.

Indeed, it seems Medway Council were intent on forcing SR’s children back into school. The mother has a suspicion that Council employees were disgruntled she had chosen to home-school her two youngest children. In her view, care proceedings were a retaliation. Indeed, Medway applied to the family court for an Emergency Protection Order in February 2010. Moreover, the Council did this in secret without SR’s knowledge. Social worker Janet Western-Mullins then ambushed her with the order and a riot van full of police officers at her home.

Social worker ‘had no evidence’

Mark Noble was a detective police inspector before going private as a safeguarding manager. He said the case against SR was 'laughable'. — Mark Noble was a detective police inspector before going private as a safeguarding manager. He said the case against SR was ‘laughable’.

Miss Western-Mullins told the court in her statement there was a ‘long history of reported squalid conditions’ at SR’s home. But she then had to admit these were based on one referral from a workman and a report from Medway Housing association in Feb 2008. She had actually ‘gone no further than the front room of SRt’s home’. She apologised for the exaggeration and ‘agreed that she had no evidence to support that assumption’.

But a police officer, Detective Constable Alexandra Smith, gave unchallenged subjective evidence supporting Medway. She said the garden ‘was a mess’, and there was ‘a litter tray smelling strongly of urine in the hallway.’

Astonishingly, and on this scant evidence, and despite SR having raised her three other children without incident, Judge Green found that the conditions of the home were ‘significant’ and ‘harmful to the children’. He made a final care order.

SR tells us that one Mark Noble, then a detective inspector in Kent Police, expressed what we shall politely call ‘reservations’ about Alex Smith’s evidence. He reportedly said the case was ‘laughable’. Mr Noble now offers his services on LinkedIn as a ‘safeguarding manager’,

We shall look back at this with shame

Councillor David Wildey is Mayor of Medway Council.

This is just the latest example of a council’s social services department putting more effort into securing a care order than helping a family stay together. Again a Council uses a ‘hired gun’ psychologist to damn the parent. We see a care order based on the most nebulous crossing of the Children Act ‘threshold’. And yet again we have Medway Council trying to send a parent to prison for exposing what she sees as the injustice she and her family have suffered.

Indeed, in case after case, parents tell this writer stories which speak of institutional, systemic injustice. In years to come, British people will look back at what the family courts did with shame. A senior judge will write a report about the parents who were deprived of their children without committing a crime. Politicians will make speeches of apology to the children condemned to local authority care and its poor outcomes.

Venue and Scripture

Medway Council will try to send SR to prison at Maidstone County Court . The address is Barker Road, ME16 8EQ. Judge Richard Polden will hear the case on Monday 17th July 2017 at 10.00am in open court . The rules say the hearing must be heard in public unless there are ‘exceptional circumstances’.

An embarrassed Medway Council will want to maintain secrecy. Accordingly, we shall expect an application from them to hear the case in private. And we shall expect Judge Polden to dismiss it.

Scripture says: Exodus 23:6 Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause. And:

Ezekiel 45:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord GOD.

We were asking Medway Councillors for comments on this story as we went to press.

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Charlie Gard: Why can’t his parents decide?

By

Stephen

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11 July 2017

21

Charlie Gard in Great Ormond Street Hospital

Stop Press (24/07/2017)

Charlie’s parents have ended their fight after a US doctor said it was now too late to treat their baby. What would have happened had Great Ormond Street Hospital simply allowed them to take him to the US in March, we shall never know.

(And do read Canon Giles Fraser on this matter in the Guardian.)

Original article:

Many of us are now asking one question above all in the case of Charlie Gard. Why does the judge not simply allow his parents to do what they think is best for their baby?

What is wrong with Charlie Gard?

Charlie Gard has a very rare mitochondrial disease, says an explanation in the Guardian. His mitochondria are failing to supply energy to the cells in his body. This mitochondrial failure is leading to damage to his body’s organs.

Charlie is in intensive care at Great Ormond Street hospital in London. Life support machines are keeping him alive because he cannot breathe by himself. The doctors say he has severe brain damage, and his heart, liver and kidneys are also affected.

However, Charlie’s mother, Connie Yates, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that her son is responsive, enjoying tickles and watching videos with his parents. She also said that she had yet to see proof that her son had irreversible brain damage.

But the doctors say Charlie Gard ‘should be allowed to die with dignity’. That just means die, in plain language. Mr Justice Francis, sitting in the High Court, agreed death would be in Charlie’s ‘best interests’. How is that?

American hospital would treat Charlie

Charlie Gard with his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard

Moreover, Charlie Gard’s parents, Chris Gard and Miss Yates, have raised over a million pounds to take Charlie to a hospital in the United States. Doctors there are offering nucleoside therapy, an experimental drug treatment. It might not even work. It probably could not reverse what has already been damaged.

Nevertheless, according to the BBC, the family’s lawyers say ‘cutting edge genetic science’ gives a ‘small chance’ of brain recovery. It is a chance ‘worth taking’. The Bible agrees with that positive view:

Ecclesiastes 9:4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

The parents have taken the case to the Court of Appeal. They even went to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But all agreed that to prolong Charlie’s life would risk causing him further suffering. The European Court gave permission for the hospital to switch off Charlie Gard’s life support systems. They said further treatment would not help him.

Pope and President Trump intervene

But then Pope Francis offered the services of the Bambino Gesù paediatric hospital’s neurosciences department in the Vatican. President Trump also expressed his support for the parents.

In addition, commentators in the United States are amazed at our legal process and decisions. News Channel 3 reports a CNN wire on the story with astonishment: ‘Courts will not allow the hospital to release the baby, Charlie Gard, into the parents’ custody so they can travel to try an experimental treatment.’

Support for Charlie Gard has gone global.

The difference is that in the US, law begins with parental rights. Here parents’ rights come second to the enforcement of parental responsibility to raise their children as the state sees best. This is coupled with the nebulous ‘best interests of the child’.

Consequently, Great Ormond Street and Justice Francis have taken to themselves the parental rights of Mr Gard and Miss Yates. Such a statist, secularist position simply cannot be right.

The Bible says: Psalm 127:3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. It does not say those children are a heritage of the State. Parental responsibility is grounded in parental rights.

People worldwide have given Charlie Gard’s parents huge financial and moral support. Plainly the Biblical position strikes a chord in the public mind. The parents have the money. They are not asking the NHS to pay for anything. Why can’t they go?

The case goes back to the High Court on Thursday. Let us pray for a righteous outcome. If not, the law must change.

Bexley children finally go home

By

Stephen

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22 June 2017

0

Four children wrongly taken into care by the London Borough of Bexley have finally gone home. — The Lord used Christian Voice as four children wrongly taken into care by the London Borough of Bexley finally went home.

Four children from a family rent apart by false allegations two years ago have finally gone home.

In early March 2017 Judge Diane Redgrave approved an agreement worked out between counsel for the parents, Hilary Pollock, and the London Borough of Bexley. Bexley returned the children to their parents on 29th March.

The Lord’s hand at work

The Lord’s hand was all over the case. He arranged for Christian solicitor Michael Phillips to instruct Miss Pollock. That proved inspired (of course) as the experienced family court barrister gained the agreement of Bexley to everything beneficial to the parents.

But after the March hearing, Miss Pollock shared with this author that Bexley never expected the parents to get through the process. Nor did they expect overnight stays in the family home organised for the children at Christmas 2016 and New Year 2017 to go as well as they did.

Accordingly, from the threat of a contested hearing, where Bexley would have continued to oppose the children going home, the council changed their mind a week before the date. Behind the scenes, the setting up of a new ‘Back Together Team’ in the Borough in late 2016 possibly had something to do with that.

Bexley took children into care after false allegation

The family’s nightmare started in June 2015. 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. 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.

He thought it could have been made by a metal implement. However, he never examined the boy himself, and none of the other children made any similar accusation. Moreover, the police found nothing resembling such an alleged item in the family’s home.

Bexley social worker Judy Simon even contacted the mother’s place of work, a care home. The call resulted in her being laid off. Secondly, Miss Simon accused the father to his employers, British Transport Police. He was dismissed last year in another miscarriage of justice. He is currently appealing that dismissal.

Judge Redgrave gave the astonishing advice to the parents to plead guilty in the Crown Court. She said this would help them have their children returned. That may have been correct. If so, it raises yet more questions about the system. Nevertheless, father and mother stuck to their guns and maintained their innocence. On the eve of the Crown Court case their eldest son confirmed he had made it all up.

Video: Christmas Ruined by Social Services

Accordingly, the parents were acquitted. Despite that, the children stayed in care. Bexley Children’s Services callously told the parents they would need to apply to the court to have them returned.

The parents courageously told their story in a video on the Christian Voice YouTube channel. It is called Christmas Ruined by Social Services. Bexley’s reaction to the video was to threaten us with contempt of court proceedings if we did not take it down.

Despite that, the video is still there and has had over 96,000 views to date.

It must be said, in March this year Judge Redgrave could not have been more constructive. Discharging the Care Order, she congratulated the parents, saying they had ‘worked very hard’. She also suggested activities to keep the eldest son occupied. He was ‘Not the only teenager in the world’ to get into trouble, she said.

Prayer answered

Christian Voice members prayed hard for this family and against the injustice they suffered. The father says: ‘Every day I see the smile and joy on my children’s faces I pray for those that helped me be a complete family man again. My children too pray for them when we all have our family prayers together. Help me to say a big thank you to them all.’

If you prayed into this case, consider yourself thanked!

Judge finds father in contempt of court again

By

Stephen

-

20 June 2017

15

Canterbury Civil Court heard the case of contempt of court against Uegene Lukjanenko

A father in dispute with Medway Council narrowly escaped jail for contempt of court in Canterbury County Court last week for the second time in six months.

Eugene Lukjanenko was charged with five breaches of an order made on 30th September 2015. The Order prohibited him from naming employees or ex-employees of the Council online.

To his credit, said Judge Richard Scarratt, he freely admitted the breaches. But His Honour rejected Mr Lukjanenko’s argument that his conduct was reasonable. Judge Scarratt sentenced him to 56 days in prison, suspended for a year.

The judge said: ‘The local authority may feel that is soft’. Nevertheless, His Honour had taken into account that if he imposed an immediate custodial term, Mr Lukjanenko ‘will be a martyr to his cause, a cause which in my judgment has no substance whatever’.

Previous contempt of court sentence ‘stemmed the flow’

In January, the same judge imposed the same sentence on the same defendant for naming his son online in breach of a High Court Reporting Restrictions Order. But yesterday, he said that had ‘stemmed the flow’ of the prohibited information. He said he hoped the same would happen this time.

The Order, made in the family court, forbad Eugene Lukjanenko from displaying the Names, Contact Details or photographs of any Medway Council employee any where.

How such an obvious infringement of his Article 10 right to Freedom of Expression came to be made was never explained at the hearing. The judge was solely concerned with Medway’s heavy-handed application to commit Mr Lukjanenko to prison.

Moreover, we are going to commend Judge Scarratt for his patience. He was dealing with an understandably upset father. The father’s first language is Russian. He continually wanted to raise what he sees as previous unjust treatment in the family courts and by Medway. He may have a point. There is little evidence the Council tried to keep this family together. And that is what we all think social workers should be doing, except in the most extreme cases of abuse or neglect.

Did he breach the Order?

The Crown Prosecution Service looked at the case under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and decided there was no case. That should raise a question about double jeopardy. In a convoluted bit of reasoning, barrister Edward Elliott, appearing for the Council, submitted that the CPS only considered one aspect of the case. Moreover, since they took no action, there was no double jeopardy in any case. This court could try the case, a point which Judge Scarratt was happy to accept.

Mr Elliott said: ‘This is not the criminal court’. So it was not about whether the conduct actually amounted to harassment. All the mattered was ‘did he breach the order?’

And of that there was little doubt. Mr Lukjanenko put the names of three social workers with their contact details (where those were in the pubic domain) on his Facebook timeline quite a while ago.

No compromise

The defendant before a similar case in January. Face obscured

The court heard that over the lunch break Mr Lukjanenko discussed the possibility of a compromise with Medway. This fell down when the Council refused to increase contact with his son. Nor would they bring forward a meeting scheduled for September to reconsider the frequency of contact. That seems mean-minded.

But the judge said the two issues, contact and the breaches of the order, could not be linked. Judge Scarratt actually heard the case in the family court. But this was not now the family court, he said. This was a civil court hearing for contempt of court in public.

However, in an extraordinary development, the court heard that Mr Lukjanenko produced a letter in the interval.

In the letter, signed by his son, the son said he wanted to come home. Mr Lukjanenko drafted it and gave it to his son to read and sign in his last meeting at the local authority contact centre. Although these were not family court proceedings, the judge was aghast. ‘Was not the contact supervised? How did that happen?’ he demanded.

Contact centres are intended to be heavily policed by social workers. Parents are not even supposed to tell their children they love them or that they are fighting to get them home. They may certainly not pass pieces of paper to them.

Reporting Restrictions

At the end of the hearing, this author drew Judge Scarratt’s attention to a Reporting Restrictions Order in the family court which forbids the media from naming the father or the son in any report on the case. However, ours is not a jurisdiction that quietly locks people up. If someone faces prison, the hearing must be advertised and the person named. Court Practice Direction, CCR (County Court Rules) 29 on Committal Applications applies. Rule 29.9 says:

9. A committal application should normally be heard in public (see CPR rule 39.2), but if it is heard in private and the court finds the respondent guilty of contempt of court, the judge shall, when next sitting in public, state –
(1) the name of the respondent;
(2) in general terms the nature of the contempt or contempts found proved; and
(3) the penalty (if any) imposed.

Edward Elliott is involved in another contempt of court case brought by Medway Council

Judge Scarratt had to comply with the end of rule 29.9 as he was already sitting in open court. His Honour accordingly ruled we could identify the father by his full name. We are actually reluctant to do so, but the interests of justice require it. The onus is on a local authority pursuing a parent to prison to be aware they are enabling the identification of parents. They normally strive very hard to avoid that. We can only hope this does not lead to identification of the child in the case.

Medway Council pursuing another parent

Eugene Lukjanenko is not the only parent Medway Council are pursuing. We understand they are after a mother, who at the moment we shall refer to as SR. SR has published details about her case on social media. She sees a miscarriage of justice towards her and her children who are now, as we understand it, of majority age anyway.

Curiously, Edward Elliott, Medway’s barrister, boasts on his chambers page about his involvement in committal proceedings against SR for contempt of court. The mother’s case will be heard in July and we shall be there, God willing, to report on the case.

Previous posts:

Family Court Restrictions: father ‘in contempt’

Father fighting Medway Council faces jail for contempt

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Tories promise family courts reform

By

Stephen

-

13 June 2017

5

This protest at Edward Timpson's home in May, led to a manifesto commitment on reform of the family courts

The Conservative Party promised reform of the family courts in their manifesto following a rooftop protest.

It is of course open to argument whether the manifesto commitment was a response to the protest at the home of Edward Timpson. Mr Timpson was Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families in the previous government. It follows he had responsibility for social services, child protection and to some extent the operation of the family courts.

Protest

The protest, on 8th May, was carried out by an aggrieved father who has fought a long campaign to be reunited with his son.

We reported on the father’s case in January when the local authority tried to have him imprisoned for contempt of court.

Medway Council asked a court to jail ‘EL’ for contempt after he posted a picture of his in-care son online. Instead circuit Judge Richard Scarratt imposed a suspended sentence.

HIs Honour instructed this author that we may only refer to the father as ‘EL’ and the son as ‘J’.

That is because of secrecy rules the family court employs to protect the reputation of the courts and local authorities.

The local paper reported on the 8th May protest here. And additionally here. Other parents have left comments which are worth reading.

Manifesto Commitment on Family Courts

Theresa May published her manifesto ten days after the protest, on 18th May. In it, she said:

‘Protecting vulnerable children and families’.
‘Placing a child under the oversight of social services and taking a child into care are amongst the most serious duties the state may discharge.’
‘We will demand all local authorities be commissioners of the highest-quality family support and child protection services, removing these responsibilities from the weakest councils and placing them in trust.
‘Finally, we shall explore ways to improve the family justice system. The family courts need to do more to support families, valuing the roles of mothers and fathers, while ensuring parents face up to their responsibilities.’

Moreover, the Tories were the only party to commit to any such reform. That in itself lends support to the view that the commitment was a direct result of EL’s rooftop protest.

Laura Smith is the new Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, winning by just 48 votes

However, the manifesto commitment did not save Mr Timpson’s seat. He lost Crewe and Nantwich to Labour’s Laura Smith.

Mrs Smith overturned a 3,620 majority. She won the seat by 48 votes.

Court appearances

The police placed the father involved on police bail pending a court charge in September. However, Medway Council are taking him to court again this Thursday 15th.

A judge will hear the case at Canterbury County Court. The Council seek to commit the father to prison for contempt of court this time after he named a social worker online. As it happens, he is perfectly entitled to do so under the law.

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Family Court Restrictions: father ‘in contempt’

By

Stephen

-

18 January 2017

0

‘EL’ outside the court. Face obscured because Family Court rules forbid the identification of children or parents.

A father fighting a local authority in the family court narrowly escaped jail for contempt of court yesterday.

We may only identify him as ‘EL’ and his fourteen-year-old son as ‘J’ on instruction from Judge Richard Scarratt, pursuant to rules designed to protect the secrecy of the family courts.

[At the time of writiing, we were not aware we could name the father under rules covering ‘committal proceedings’ (sending people to prison) in the civil courts. But we shall not correct it. The article stands.]

Father posted notes and pictures

The judge said EL posted notes, an image and the name of his son, identifying him as a child in care.

He also had a picture of himself and his son on Twitter and has posted tweets identifying ‘ J’ and his school. Another post identified a contact centre and its manager.

These activities contravened a reporting restrictions order in the case made by Mrs Justice Theis in September 2015.

It was never stated in evidence or in the submissions of Mark Chaloner, barrister for Medway Council, precisely how any member of the public could actually identify the son from this information. Nevertheless, Judge Scarratt decided the case was proven.

Local authorities fear the light

But His Honour criticised Medway Council for seeking (in vain) to have the case heard in private. ‘Only in rare cases should committal proceedings be heard behind closed doors and this is not one of them’, said Judge Scarratt.

EL’s supporters were consequently in court. Many of them were also parents of children unjustly, they told this reporter, in the care of local authorities.

Attempts such as that by Medway Council to hold the case in private only strengthen the public’s view that local authorities are ashamed of what they do in the family court.

Suspended sentence in family court

When it came to sentencing, His Honour was clearly conscious that if he sent EL to prison it would hand the father a publicity coup. A fine would also run of the risk of non-payment and consequent committal. So he handed down a suspended sentence of 56 days and told EL to behave himself for a year.

EL and J are only allowed to meet for a couple of hours four times a year, in the ‘contact centre’. The father says Medway Council have not always kept to that ‘care plan’. Mr Chaloner, who acted decently throughout, undertook to make sure Medway would arrange a meeting this month. Judge Scarratt demanded a report next month on that matter.

Father’s campaign will continue

EL is clearly not going to let things rest. He set up a new protest on the steps of Canterbury Combined Court immediately after the hearing. His campaign will continue, he told this reporter, until his son is returned.

Read why ‘J’ is in care, how Medway Council encouraged him to play a violent video game which Anders Breivik used for training, and how a psychologist invented a new anti-Semitic medical condition: ‘inherited holocaust trauma’ which allows local authorities to remove the children of Jewish parents.

Jer 22:3 Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place.

1John 3:10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

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Father fighting Medway Council faces jail for contempt

By

Stephen

-

17 January 2017

2

Protestors support 'EL' outside Canterbury Family Court — Protestors support ‘EL’ outside Canterbury Family Court. He is fighting Medway Council for return of his son ‘J’.

Medway Council is asking a court to jail a father for contempt of court after he posted a picture of his in-care son online.

Medway Council took son into care

Canterbury Family Court heard the father, a concert pianist, had breached an order made by Mrs Justice Theis in 2015 banning him, or anyone, from doing anything which might identify his son.

The son, who also plays the piano, is being fostered after being taken into care – for the second time – by Medway Council.

Circuit Judge Richard Scarratt instructed this author that we may only refer to the father as ‘EL’ and the son as ‘J’.

That is because of secrecy rules the family court employs to protect the reputation of the courts and local authorities.

Barrister Mark Chaloner, a Southampton local Councillor who is representing Medway, refused to tell me why the boy was in care. That may be because he was busy. But a woman who appeared to be briefing him refused to give her name, perhaps because the grounds for keeping ‘J’ in care appear very thin.

Medway Council allowed boy to play Breivik’s violent video game

‘J’ was taken into care for the first time in 2010. His father, who is a single parent, left his son, 8 or 9 at the time, home alone. ‘J’ got into some trouble with a neighbour’s son. Rather than warn ‘EL’ not to leave his son alone again, Medway Council took the boy away.

While in Medway’s care, the council failed to safeguard ‘J’. He was encouraged by his foster parents to play particularly violent video games in their possession. These included one used by Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik as ‘training’, and about which an MP has called for a ban. They also refused to let him practice his music.

The father told this ministry that when his son came out of care, the effects of the emotional harm inflicted on him by the council became apparent in increasingly violent behaviour.

Mistakes made in asking for help and complaining

In 2014 there was a bout of extreme behaviour from ‘J’. ‘EL’ made the mistake of dialing 999 to ask for for help from paramedics. Ambulance staff attended with police and naturally, social services again became involved. There were lurid stories in the press of the boy ‘cowering under a piano’.

These stories, put about by the local authority, made it appear as if the son was hiding from his father. In reality, says the father, he was trying to hide from the police and social services.

‘EL’ then made a second mistake. He complained about Medway Council. Many parents report the system ‘biting back’ when they complain. The Council promptly commissioned one Melanie Gill to provide a psychologist’s report on the father. In this ministry’s experience, a case in the family court is never complete without a psychiatric report on the parents.

New Jewish mental condition

Melanie Gill, inventor of 'Inherited Holocaust Trauma' — Melanie Gill, inventor of ‘Inherited Holocaust Trauma’

Miss Gill’s website claims she specialises ‘in developmental trauma, attachment science, schema theory, family dynamics, mental health and child and adult forensic assessment’.

She is also well-connected in Parliament.

EL’s 84-year-old father happens to have survived the Jewish ghetto in Vinnytsa in Ukraine during WW2.

Although conditions were appalling in the ghetto, the Nazis did not separate families as in the concentration camps and EL’s father remained with his father and mother.

Out of this, Melanie Gill dreamed up a previously unheard-of condition. She decided EL was suffering from ‘inherited holocaust trauma’.

Because of this imaginary genetic condition, which must affect a huge number of Jewish people, EL was found unfit to care for his son until he had therapy, which no reputable psychiatrist would provide.

The anti-Semitic stance of Medway Council was further in evidence when their social workers refused to allow ‘J’ to attend a Passover (Pesach) celebration with his father.

Care Plan ‘not honoured’ by Medway Council

Some of the Christmas Cards which Medway Council refused to deliver to 'J' — Some of the Christmas Cards which Medway Council refused to deliver to ‘J’

A care plan allows ‘EL’ to see ‘J’ in a ‘contact centre’ four times a year, although he says Medway do not honour this committment. Father and son are forbidden to speak in their native language and when ‘EL’ tried to pass a copy of the Human Rights Act to ‘J’ the social workers objected, saying it was not in ‘J’s’ ‘best interests’ to know his human rights.

‘EL’ also says:
* Medway refused to deliver Christmas presents to his son,
* They refused to pass on Christmas cards from family and friends,
* They even refused to allow ‘J’ to take a phone call from his grandfather,
* Medway refuse to accept that keeping ‘J’ in care is doing him any harm.

The court heard from Ann Domeney, Deputy Director of Social Care at Medway. She told the court she had seen a Facebook page and some Twitter feed of photographs and other details of ‘J’ and ‘EL’ together and the name of a contact centre and its manager.

Social Care Duputy Ann Domeney runs a sideline offering management consultancy to her previous local authority employers. — Social Care Deputy Ann Domeney runs a sideline offering management consultancy to her previous local authority employers.

Is it likely?

Judge Scarratt can only find ‘EL’ in contempt of court if what he has published ‘is likely directly or indirectly to lead to the identification of the child’. Under cross examination from ‘EL’, who represented himself, neither Ann Domeney not Mr Chaloner’s second witness, contact centre boss Sarah Cahill, could think of anyone in the general public who had identified ‘J’ from the information he posted. The likelihood appears slim.

Judge Scarratt will pass judgment today. If he finds ‘EL’ guilty of contempt of court he will then pass sentence on him. That could range from a conditional discharge to imprisonment. The maximum sentence is two years.

Post-Script

As a post-script, it appears Ann Domeney previously worked for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. She has now set up a very lucrative little business, ‘A D Children’s Services Ltd‘ supplying that council with ‘management consultancy’.

His Honour Judge Scarratt has been criticised and his judgments set aside on at least two occasions in the Court of Appeal for siding with local authorities rather than giving due weight to the evidence of parents. His Honour, ‘Dickie’ to his friends, has also been up an African mountain fundraising for a charity, of which his wife is a trustee, which provides children’s home places to local authorities. But more about all that after the verdict, expected today.

Have you been affected by Family Court injustice?

If you have been affected by injustice in the family courts, we should like to hear from you. In particular, if you are a young adult who was wrongfully taken into care and your right to a family life was thereby disrupted, you may have a cause for legal action against the local authority. Contact us at info@christianvoice.org.uk

Psalm 72:4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

Malachi 4:6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Luke 17:1 Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! 2 It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

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Walsall Children Go Home!

By

Stephen

-

4 November 2016

1

Walsall Council oFFices — Walsall Council offices

Three children taken into care by Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council on the strength of a false allegation of sexual abuse were returned home yesterday.

Walsall’s decision to return the children came after their barrister Richard Hadley reviewed the evidence in the case following a failed prosecution of the family’s eldest boys in Wolverhampton Crown Court.

A High Court hearing later this month will rubber-stamp the decision.

This wonderful result is a massive answer to the prayers of our members.

We have been following and reporting on the case all through this year, and the Lord has used our intervention finally to bring justice.

When this author turned up to cover the case in the family court in February of this year, the judge and the advocates ran around like scalded cats. The judge granted the local authority an astonishing six-week adjournment to consider their position in the light of a journalist turning up. It was that initial six-week delay for Walsall to consider its position that led inexorably to the criminal case finally catching up with the civil case and justice being done. Delay followed delay as the hand of the Lord was heavily on the whole matter.

It is humbling to realise that if I had not turned up that day an adoption order for the children would have been made earlier this year. But my intervention was merely one of the things the Lord used.

So all praise and glory goes to him. Join us in thanksgiving to our mighty God!

Isaiah 56:1 Thus saith the LORD, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed.

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Walsall dither over child care case

By

Stephen

-

20 October 2016

0

Richard Hadley, Counsel for Walsall, will look at the whole case again.

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.

Michael Phillips represented the father. — Michael Phillips represents the father and was defence solicitor for his sons.

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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Council look anew at child care case

By

Stephen

-

22 September 2016

1

In legal cases what is said between advocates in a conference room is often as important as what happens in court.

And so it proved on Wednesday last week (14th September 2016) at Walsall Family Court, where a local authority was forced to go back to the drawing board in a child care case.

ACQUITTAL IN CROWN COURT

The family were torn apart by allegations of sexual assault made last year by a small girl who had been staying with them. The family’s youngest children were taken into care, where they remain to this day. Meanwhile, a criminal prosecution was launched against the family’s two eldest sons.

Early last month, the two were acquitted of sexual abuse in Wolverhampton Crown Court. It emerged during the trial that the girl, seven at the time, had admitted in a police interview to watching pornography with an older girl next door to her father’s house. Her account of sexual abuse was confused and contradictory, the forensic evidence not only did not assist but introduced the DNA of a ‘mystery male’, and the medical report showed no evidence of the various forms of sexual penetration she alleged.

The young men’s parents gave strong testimony for the defence about the layout of their home and the ground rules in place. Not only did the alleged abuse not happen, it could not have happened, they told the court.

COUNCIL MISREPRESENTED EVIDENCE

The parallel proceedings in the family court had been subject to a string of delays, one of which was occasioned by my turning up at court as an accredited journalist earlier this year. That delayed matters by eight weeks. Another delay happened because the judge, Judge Rosalind Bush, was indisposed when the case was due to recommence at the end of July.

The local authority, Walsall Council, applied last year to have the younger children adopted without waiting for the outcome of the parallel criminal case. They told the court wrongly the allegations of abuse were backed up by medical evidence. They never did the maths on the likelihood of so many members of one family being paedophiles. (Paedophilia – sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children – isn’t genetic and the incidence in the population at large is less than one in a hundred. The probability of two individuals both being paedophiles is one in ten thousand. And so on.)

Dr Helen Rodwell runs Jigsaw Psychology with her husband Lee from an address in Derby and is doing very nicely out of it. The parents say she bullied them into admitting the alleged sexual abuse had happened.

Walsall never sat down calmly with the parents and never discussed whether what was alleged was even plausible. They never carried out properly their statutory duty to investigate. Instead, they tried retrospectively to justify their knee-jerk decision to whisk the younger children into care.

PARENTS DENOUNCED TO EMPLOYERS

Crucially, no-one in the social work department appeared to have any knowledge of how children re-enact what they have seen on screen in subsequent play. Or as in this case, how a child can fantasise such images into a play scenario. But then again, they were unaware of what the girl had been viewing next-door. They had never seen the police evidence in its entirety, despite giving the family court the impression they had.

So the local authority presented the abuse as proven and the children at risk. They denounced the parents to their respective employers and colleges. They, the parents’ own solicitors, and psychologist Dr Helen Rodwell of Jigsaw Psychology, bullied the parents into accepting that abuse might have happened. ‘If you accept it happened, we can help you,’ they told them.

SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE

I was present through the criminal trial. I heard and saw all the evidence, from both the prosecution, gamely presented by Mr Paul Spratt, and the defence. When the family court reconvened on Friday 9th September, I, a humble journalist, knew more about the evidence than anyone else in the court room. (The parents, as witnesses for the defence, did not hear the earlier witnesses for the prosecution – the girl herself and her parents – who did not actually help the prosecution’s case).

The boy’s parents clearly could no longer sustain a position of admitting to the family court that abuse had happened while showing the criminal court how it could not have happened. Something had to give.

Emboldened by their sons’ acquittal, and despite Judge Bush saying the verdict changed nothing, both parents reversed their positions and maintained no abuse had occurred. Dramatically, their advocates immediately resigned, and Her Honour ordered a new fact-finding exercise in which she would look at all the police evidence and transcripts from the criminal trial.

A NEW SOLICITOR

That brought us to Wednesday 16th September when Judge Bush set a date for a directions hearing in November.

But the father in the case had managed to find a new solicitor to represent him. By the grace of God, this was the very man who had prepared his sons’ case in the criminal court, Michael Phillips. Mr Phillips was in a position to bring his extensive knowledge of the case to the attention of the other advocates, in particular to barrister Richard Hadley, representing Walsall. As a result, Mr Hadley told me after the hearing the local authority is now going to re-examine the whole case.

Mr Hadley’s profile at Birmingham’s No5 Chambers says he is ‘particularly skilled at unravelling complicated medical evidence’. He is also ‘regularly instructed in high profile cases involving the most serious of injuries, sexual abuse and fabricated or induced illness’. Mr Hadley sounds like the ideal man to assess all the evidence and bring this terrible miscarriage of justice to an early close.

KEEP PRAYING

There might be no need for Her Honour’s ‘fact-find’ at all and the children could be home for Christmas. Keep praying for the case, for the parents, for Mr Hadley and Mr Phillips, for Judge Bush and everyone involved. Thank God for the supernatural delays in the family court case which have facilitated this development. And please pray for the little girl and her estranged parents. There is so much healing needed all round, but particularly for her.

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Judge: ‘Not Guilty’ doesn’t mean ‘Innocent’

By

Stephen

-

12 September 2016

12

Update 22/09/2016:

Click here for Council look anew at care case.

A senior family court judge told a court last Friday (9th September 2016) that a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict in the criminal court did not mean the defendants were innocent.

Judge Rosalind Bush said a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict merely meant the jury had not been sure ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ the defendants actually did it.

The BBC were ‘at fault’ for perpetuating the misunderstanding that people found not guilty were innocent, she continued.

Her Honour cited the case of O J Simpson in support. He was, she said, found not guilty in the criminal court but culpable in the civil court.

THE O J SIMPSON CASE

In 1994 O.J. Simpson was apprehended after a famous ‘low-speed’ car chase and charged with the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. He was found not guilty in 1995 after his expensive high-profile defence team suggested DNA samples had been mishandled. But he was subsequently found ‘responsible’ for the deaths when the Brown and Goldman families sued in the civil court. They were awarded $35million in damages.

Simpson already had a criminal record. Prior to the murders, he had pleaded no contest to spousal abuse in 1989. Subsequently, in 2007, he was convicted of using a deadly weapon to commit kidnapping, burglary and armed robbery, and sentenced to 33 years in prison, where he remains.

This ministry has not been able to contact the defendants in the case to which Her Honour was referring, young men of good character who have never been in trouble with the police, to ask their reaction to being compared to O.J. Simpson.

CHILDREN TAKEN INTO CARE

Judge Bush has presided in the past over criminal cases. She made her comments however in the family court, in a case in which a family’s youngest children were taken into care last year on a social worker’s description of the evidence of a seven-year-old girl that no fewer than four of the family’s siblings had separately and systematically sexually abused her over a period of two years. The local authority, Walsall Council, have applied to have the children adopted.

The girl’s evidence also led to criminal charges against the family’s two oldest sons. Their trial ended in acquittals a month ago when a jury returned not guilty verdicts on no fewer than seven charges, one charge was struck out by the trial judge, His Honour Judge John Wait, and three other charges were abandoned by the prosecution. The young men walked free from court. But, said Judge Bush, that proved nothing in the family court.

Nobody from Walsall Council found time to attend the trial. The Council’s legal department is only now trying to gain access to the police evidence.

EVIDENCE SELF-CONTRADICTORY

Even before the jury heard any evidence, charges of rape, which had been hanging over the defendants for months, were withdrawn from the charge sheet on the opening day. Judge Wait told Paul Spratt, prosecuting, that the evidence simply did not support those charges.

A reasonable man might have thought the Crown Prosecution Service would have spotted that already, but they had not and Mr Spratt was left with no option but to withdraw the charges.

Even then, evidence from prosecution witnesses revealed confusion in the case. Her mother told the court her daughter said she had been raped. Later she told the police she hadn’t. Her daughter, who admitted to watching pornography with an older girl, ‘L’, even changed her story during police interviews.

On one occasion, she described a depraved act which she said was carried out on her. Later, being asked to confirm it, she denied it and said she saw it on a video at L’s house.

CRIMINAL TRIAL ACQUITTAL WILL NOT AFFECT FAMILY PROCEEDINGS

The parents of the accused boys say they were bullied in the family court, even by their own advocates, into admitting that sexual abuse ‘could have happened’ in their home. They say a psychologist, one Dr Helen Rodwell of Jigsaw Psychology, commissioned by Walsall to report on them, told them she could only help them if they admitted at the very least that the allegations could be true.

But called to the stand as defence witnesses in their sons’ criminal trial, both described to the court how the alleged abuse not only did not happen but could not have happened.

On Friday, the mother and father dramatically repeated this robust stance, this time in the family court, contradicting the earlier statements they say they were pressurised into. No abuse happened, they said. Although Judge Bush said she could have held them to their previous position, she allowed the retraction. That meant the case now goes back to square one, with a new ‘fact-finding’ exercise set in motion.

But Judge Bush repeated that allegations made in relation to behaviour were not disposed of in the family court by an acquittal in the crown court. The outcome of the criminal trial would not affect the current family proceedings – even though both involve the same parties and the same evidence.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY

The comments of Judge Bush seem to indicate a system of ‘double jeopardy’ is in place in our law. A person acquitted in the Crown Court, walking free in the immortal words ‘without a stain on your character’, can be hauled before the family court and told on ‘the balance of probabilities’ that they only got away with it in the criminal court and they really did it after all.

Judge Rosalind Bush is highly experienced and respected. Nevertheless, if another family court judge, sitting alone without colleagues, let alone a jury, decides that abuse has occurred on the lower ‘civil court’ standard of evidence, children could be unjustly torn from their family and could be adopted against theirs and their parents’ will. Parents, older brothers, even children, will be tarred with the label of ‘child sex abuser’ on evidence which would never stand up in a criminal trial. Children could be unjustly subjected to the emotional harm of the care system, with all its negative outcomes.

Whether such a system, starkly revealed by Her Honour’s comments, accords with basic principles of justice is something the British public and those who legislate on their behalf might address.

They may take the view that the ‘balance of probabilities’ is a very good standard for deciding whether a fence has been built this side or that side of a property boundary. The standard has indeed been upheld in the family court after a number of cases in the Supreme Court (and previously the House of Lords). But the debate will no doubt continue over whether it Is still appropriate where criminal conduct is alleged and the most draconian penalties of family separation may be imposed on parents and children.

BIBLICAL POSTSCRIPT

Christian theology strongly reminds us we are all guilty before the throne of grace:

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Equally, in a court of law, and in respect of a particular matter, a person can actually be innocent!

Exodus 23:7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

Society at large and judges in particular have an immense responsibility to dispense justice according to the precepts of God so that the guilty are punished and the innocent acquitted. In addition, people in power must not oppress those below them:

Jeremiah 22:3 Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place.

So please pray for all judges and remember in particular to lift up Judge Rosalind Bush. Pray also for the advocates in the case to remember they are to serve the cause of justice. Pray for the social workers to be people of truth. Pray for the family to stay strong in their Christian faith, believing that justice will be done.

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Bexley opposes children’s return

By

Stephen

-

21 June 2016

0

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.

Worcestershire loses adoption bid

By

Stephen

-

7 June 2016

0

2016Worcester 011 — Queen Victoria stands in front of Worcester Shire Hall, where the Family Court sits.

By Stephen Green

A local authority has lost its bid to put four children from a Christian home up for adoption.

Sitting in Worcester Family Court in Worcester’s impressive old Shire Hall building, His Honour Judge Richard Rundell ordered instead that the children should stay in long-term foster care and enjoy regular contact with their grandparents and indirect contact – cards, gifts and letters – from their parents. Far from ‘nothing else would do’ (the legal test for adoption), adoption in this case wouldn’t do at all.

THREE MONTHS TO FIND ADOPTERS

Worcestershire County Council protested they would do their best to keep the children together. They would look for adoptive parents willing to take the children as a sibling group for a full three months, said Social Work Team Leader Glenn McWilliams. But Judge Rundell was unimpressed. To allow adoption, which would happen against the wishes of parents and grandparents, would inevitably split the children up, he ruled.

In addition, adoption would mean the children would lose their family identity and all contact with their parents and grandparents. If they were split up, Judge Rundell said, keeping the children in contact with each other would rely on the good will of the adoptive parents, and these might moreover be at opposite ends of the country.

On top of that, the eldest two children, even though not yet in their teens, were adamant in their opposition to adoption. In those circumstances, said His Honour, any adoption would be very unlikely to endure.

SOCIAL WORKER CHANGES SIDES

The Court heard a couple currently fostering the children had been doing so from early last year (2015) on a short-term basis. By the grace of God they decided in December they could now foster the children long-term. The court-appointed ‘Children’s Guardian’, Mrs Maggie Stephens, represented by solicitor Aiden Codd, was robust under cross-examination from Worcestershire’s barrister Greg Rogers.

She maintained that having the children adopted would mean splitting them up and that would be ‘cruel’. You could not ‘reinvent these children’, she told Mr Rogers, a reference to the new surnames they would be given upon adoption.

There was dramatic evidence on 10th May, the first day of the two-day hearing, when social worker Alison Davies took the stand. Ms Davies had been involved with the case from February 2014, but she resigned from Worcestershire in protest at their decision to press ahead with an application for adoption. They should ‘remain where they are’ she told Mr Rogers. She had been all for adoption, but seeing how the children were now ‘thriving’ in the long-term foster care she had changed her mind.

FINANCIAL CONSIDERATIONS

Asked why the foster parents did not want to put themselves up as prospective adopters, or apply for a Special Guardianship Order, Ms Davies said it was purely down to economics. They were being paid as foster parents and so could afford nice clothes, treats and holidays for the children. As adopters, they would lose out financially and be able to provide none of that. The financial considerations could also have been in the mind of Worcestershire and their advocate in pressing for adoption, but no-one was crass enough to say that.

The children came to the attention of Worcestershire Social Services when the youngest child was unruly at nursery. Social workers said there was a chaotic atmosphere in the home on one occasion when they visited. The mother was trying to home-school despite having bi-polar challenges, and the father resented the social workers being involved.

But Ms Davies said that if the parents improved their position there was no reason why they should not resume contact with the children, who at the moment wanted to stay where they were, and crucially did not wish to return home. But the grandparents should see the children together once a month.

ONLY SIX COUPLES ‘IN THE MARKET’

Barrister Andrew Bainham, representing all four grandparents, told the judge there were only six couples in England and Wales who could take a four-sibling group. His Honour asked Mr McWilliams direct if he knew anything more about them? He didn’t. How many four-sibling groups were ‘in the market’, he asked. Mr McWilliams said he didn’t know.

Judge Rundell went on to tell Worcestershire they should be ‘grabbing (the foster parents) with open arms. … If after three months you can’t find these saints who will take four children you will have to split them up’, he said. ‘Then you have to get adopters to facilitate sibling contact? It’s a risk. And scouring the countryside, distance increases the risk.’

Ending the first day of the two-day hearing, the Judge told Mr Rogers: ‘The local authority may wish to consider its position overnight’. That is the nearest he could come to telling him that his case for adoption was falling apart and that he shouldn’t waste any more of the court’s time.

DON’T NAME THE COUNCIL!

But the next day, in came Mr Rogers still pursuing the adoption line which the court had heard would split up the children, and separate them forever from their grandparents and parents. His page on his Chambers website, the St Ives set in Birmingham, says ‘common sense is frequently in short supply’ in the family court. It ‘requires a sensitive and pragmatic approach’.

Such an approach was conspicuously absent from his presentation. Indeed, in talks with the judge involving this author to do with a ‘reporting restrictions order,’ Mr Rogers not only did not want me to identify the children, their parents or family structure, which is becoming normal procedure, but any of the parties. He did not want me to name Worcestershire County Council, any of the experts, social workers, the ‘children’s guardian’, or any of the advocates. Judge Rundell had earlier expressed himself in favour of transparency, and every one of Mr Roger’s suggestions was thrown out.

WORCESTERSHIRE IGNORED JUDGE

The only real issue was the frequency of contact with the grandparents. With Alison Davies saying it should be twelve times a year and Mrs Stephens opting for six times a year, the Judge ruled with the ‘children’s guardian’, and said bi-monthly contact should be written into the care plan.

But when the case came back to rule on press restrictions and to check the care plan the following week, the Local Authority’s care plan had the grandparents seeing the children just twice a year. His Honour was not happy and sent Mr Rogers away to redraft it.

Social worker Toni Badham, responsible for the drafting, apologised to the grandparents afterwards, claiming she had only just become involved. But this author understands she was involved right from the start. One if the grandparents told this author the machinations of the Council meant they had been ‘to hell and back’.

But in the end, the hand of the Almighty was strongly on this case. The grandparents applied to be ‘interveners’ which delayed matters sufficiently for the foster parents to decide they would offer a long-term placement. If the matter had been heard last November it could easily gone the other way.

The mother was represented by Miss Nevine Zaki and the father by Mr Michael Phillips.

LESSONS WE LEARN

The case illustrates several important points:

1 Any teaching environment these days is watching your children.

2 Any shortcomings whatever in your parenting skills will be used by a local authority against you.

3 If you lose your temper with social workers it will only count against you.

4 The position of the court-appointed Children’s Guardian is crucial. It is a brave judge who will go against her.

5 Local Authorities are over-keen to get children adopted. And when adoption is not on the table, they are too keen to keep children in their care and resentful about them going back to families.

6 The rules about getting children adopted in 26 weeks are draconian, especially if it is to be a forced adoption in opposition to parents’ wishes.

7 Local Authorities are both incompetent and tricky. They do not honour their promises and even try blatantly to circumvent the clear orders of judges.

8 Judges do not have enough power to insist that details like particular foster parents are written into care plans. Instead, both judges and parents have to rely on the good nature of local authorities, which may be in short supply.

PRAY: Thank God for such a positive outcome in all the circumstances.

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Judge rules Bucks girls can go home

By

Stephen

-

2 March 2016

2

Milton Keynes Magistrates Court, where the case was heard.

A Family Court judge has ruled two children should go home after criticising a local authority for failing to admit that they were suffering emotional harm in its care.

District Judge Patrick Perusko made the order on Friday 26th February 2016 in Milton Keynes Family Court.

A series of exchanges between the judge and Mr Shaw, representing Buckinghamshire County Council, served to illustrate the extent to which local authorities go to build a case against parents while denying all responsibility themselves.

Mr Shaw contended that the children, girls aged twelve and fourteen, were at significant risk of harm at home. The Local Authority, he said, wanted to keep the girls in care.

But after repeated questioning by District Judge Perusko, it emerged that the report prepared by social worker Rosalinde Woodroffe had not adequately balanced this alleged harm with the known harm currently occurring to the sisters from being held in a foster home where they had been deprived of privacy, night-clothes, toothbrushes and even clean underwear.

Bucks County Council were not ‘considering the other side of the coin’, said the judge.

The eldest girl had emailed the judge pleading to go home, and her views and those of her sister must be taken into account, he said.

Mr Shaw said the parents needed to recognise that they had harmed their children, even though the girls had subsequently challenged what the social worker wrote down, which was the Council’s only basis for keeping them. He was incensed that the children had refused to give social workers the pins to their mobile phones and annoyed that there appeared to be ‘collusion’ between the children and their parents. He contended there was fear in the home of the Christian family, physical chastisement, and a belief in satanic forces.

But the judge insisted that there was no analysis by the local authority of the harm being suffered now and therefore no possible assessment of a ‘balance of harm’.

He had no need to hear from the parents’ barrister, he said, and then explained ‘why the children are going home’.

The District Judge said: ‘Children should be at home if possible and should only be removed when there is a real risk of harm.’ He said the risks about which the local authority was concerned ‘have not gone but can be safely managed with the children returned home’.

Mr Shaw said the children would return home after school that same afternoon.

Afterwards, the court-appointed children’s guardian said she was ‘very pleased’ with the outcome.

The parents, devout Christians, were praising God outside the courtroom after the verdict.

Mr Shaw refused to comment.

On the train home, this writer received a call to report that the girls had indeed returned home.

This might not be the end of the matter. Bucks County Council seem determined to try to get the children back, but the case has shown that prayer and hope can prevail. Dear reader, give God the glory. The presence of the Press in a courtroom probably does no harm either. And after the debacle of the week before, this time there was no objection to the presence of a journalist in the courtroom from Buckinghamshire County Council.

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Bucks County Council fails to bar the press

By

Stephen

-

20 February 2016

6

LinHazell — Councillor Lin Hazell, Bucks County Council Cabinet Member for Children's Services

Martin Tett, Leader of Conservative-controlled Buckinghamshire County Council — Councillor Martin Tett, Leader of Conservative-controlled Bucks County Council

Councillor Lin Hazell, Bucks County Council Cabinet Member for Children's Services — Councillor Lin Hazell, Bucks County Council Cabinet Member for Children’s Services

A local authority has failed in a bid to oust a journalist covering a child protection case in the family court.

Buckinghamshire County Council (leader Cllr Martin Tett, left) initially raised no objection to the presence of Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice and an accredited journalist, in a case where they were seeking an interim care order.

But during an interval in which District Judge Patrick Perusko met the two children involved, at their request, before reconvening in Milton Keynes Magistrates Court, the Tory-run council’s social workers and advocate together with the court-appointed ‘children’s guardian’ and her solicitor took the opportunity to do an internet search of Christian Voice.

When the court reassembled, Bucks County Council’s advocate, one Mr Dove, objected to Green’s presence, based on blog gossip about the alleged political stance of the prayer and action group. The solicitor for the children’s guardian backed up the plea.

But District Judge Perusko was having none of it. Mr Green, he told the advocates, was entitled to be there. If they objected, it had to be on specific grounds listed in a court practice direction. It was clear these did not include that the opinions of a journalist were not politically correct.

So long as the children were not identified directly or indirectly, the media were entitled to report on a child protection case. The advocates were left looking foolish.

Stephen Green said afterwards, ‘Whilst I am flattered by the attention they have given to a humble reporter and commentator, I do feel Bucks County Council could have spent their time in the interval better, perhaps by going out to buy some toothbrushes for the children in their care.’

Click here for our report of the hearing: Social Services tell girls: ‘No Nightie? Wear my Tee-shirt!’

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Social Services tell girls: ‘No Nightie? Wear my Tee-shirt!’

By

Stephen

-

20 February 2016

1

Two adolescent girls taken into care by a local authority’s social services had to sleep in their school uniforms, a court was told yesterday.

District Judge Patrick Perusko, sitting in Milton Keynes Family Court, heard that the sisters, one aged 14 and the other 12, were not provided by Buckinghamshire County Council with night clothes. They also complained there was no lock on the bedroom door in their foster placement.

Eventually, said one of the girls, the foster mother gave her one of her husband’s old tee-shirts to sleep in.

The sisters also complained that they were given no tooth brushes and that when they asked for a hair brush, a used shared one was produced tangled with other people’s hair. The foster parents made no attempt to keep their dog out of the girls’ room, which terrified them.

To pile on the indignity, the girls were also given no clean underwear by the County Council.

Girls want to go home

The girls are from a stable Christian family and not surprisingly, the District Judge said that both girls had told him they wanted to go home.

The case started when eldest girl’s school learnt that her mother had raised her hand to her. Any contact, says the mother, was accidental, but the school told social services and both sisters were taken into care just over a week ago.

The parents refused to sign a notice under Section 20 of the Children Act, which would effectively ask Bucks CC to provide accommodation. The Council then sought an care order in the County Court. An interim order was granted on Friday 12th February, for eight days. Yesterday’s hearing was to decide whether it should be extended.

Both parents complained to Christian Voice that social worker Rosalinde Woodroffe either misunderstood or misrepresented what they had told them in the report she made. In other cases, parents have said that social workers have resorted to invention to embellish the case the Council was building against them. One social worker whistle-blower even said his bosses objected when his write-up was too favourable to parents.

Bucks Council causing emotional harm

The court even heard that Bucks CC had only served papers on the parents the day before the hearing, giving them no time to prepare a statement in response.

The Judge said significant emotional harm had been done and was continuing to be done by the local authority to the girls. He was surprised that in a whole week the Local Authority had not troubled to arrange a medical examination for the girls to substantiate its contention that they had been subjected to unreasonable physical chastisement – or any at all.

But it seemed that because of what he had read in the report the judge was prepared to order that the girls, as he said, ‘Should stay where they are – just about – on balance.’

A case where parents deny that have done anything wrong is difficult for social workers to understand, but this ministry is surprised that District Judge Perusko did not hear oral evidence from the parents before making his ruling.

The case was set down for another hearing on Friday 26th February, at which, said the District Judge, he hoped to return the children to their parents. ‘They are going home’, he said, ‘subject to the parents being open and honest and co-operating with social services’.

See Bucks County Council fails to bar the press

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