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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Well, I’m pretty glad the Lord preserved me from my foolishness in being desperate to get married, and then have kids, at least here in UK. USA not quite so bad it seems (yet).
“And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.”
What is the common factor in these matters? women in charge. They should be at home looking after the house, kids etc. What could be more important than raising the next generation?
Even most men these days act like women. From what I can see, the epitome of masculinity is considered by many to be these muscle-bound, highly paid apes who play rugby. Other professional “sports” are similarly tarnished. And we are invited to think of these people as heroes! As far as I am concerned, a hero is someone who, I don’t know, does something about the 34,000 children who starve to death every day ( and who isn’t highly paid by these so-called “charities”)
Only the Lord can sort the mess that the world is in, and getting rapidly worse every day. May we all, including myself, be worthy to meet Him when He comes, and let us keep our lamps trimmed, “for the darkness is coming when no man can work”.
No Mark, the answer is not to retreat from the world, it is to shine the light into the corners where injustice hides. Oh, and some very clever men play rugby, especially round where you live! We don’ do evolution here, let alone reverse evolution.
It’s worth remembering the words of the Lord through Jeremiah to the captives in Babylon. They apply, I suggest, equally to us in our day:
Jer 29:5 Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them;
Jer 29:6 Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.
Jer 29:7 And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.
And rest assured, there are those of us committed to bringing injustice in the family courts to light in the earnest hope that it may one day cease to occur, at least on the industrial scale I am seeing.
Hello Stephen
Who said anything about retreating from the world? Nor do I “do evolution”, reverse or otherwise.
The Apostle Paul said it is better to be single, if one can stand it, more time for the Lord’s work. On the other hand, “he who finds a wife finds a good thing”.
If fighting injustice in the Family Courts is your calling, great, hallelujah! Its not mine, particularly. I am more interested, for myself, in the posts about politics, esp Islam, political correctness, etc etc.
Bless you brother
Mark
Bless you brother, at least you’re doing something!
Judge Rosalind Bush is correct.
“Not Guilty” means “We can’t prove that he did it.”
“Innocent” means “We can prove that he did not do it.”
The distinction is intended to prevent people from being convicted of crimes they haven’t committed.
If the prosecution knows that the suspect is guilty, but cannot prove it, the suspect should be acquitted; but it doesn’t always happen.
good point Chris Powell
Are we saying that in this case the small children were taken into care on the whims of a social worker believing the allegations of a child?
I thought that social services had to apply to the courts for a care order. For that they need proof of harm or suffering, which relies on evidence. Maybe I’m wrong then.
Yes, Mike, that is exactly what we are saying. The social worker chose to believe one child when she said it happened and to disbelieve the other children when they said it didn’t. It’s all very ‘Operation Midland’, isn’t it?
Under the Children Act 1989, Sections 37 and 47 require the local authority to ‘undertake an investigation’. In this case the social worker did not do that. She did not have all the evidence but purported she did. She had prejudged the matter and took evidence selectively even misrepresenting what she thought she had. She acted as if she were prosecutor, judge and jury.
Deciding not on ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ but on ‘balance of probabilities’, the judge then concluded the family’s children were ‘suffering or likely to suffer significant harm’ and made a care order.
In how many other cases do social workers mislead the court in such a way? What standard of evidence should the family court require? Has the pendulum swung too far in always believing a child? And further to that question, why are we so keen to believe a child when they say something terrible has happened and not to believe them or others when they say it didn’t?
I understood that the corroborative evidence, ie DNA and medical investigations were all negative, so even when the child’s story involved watching porn in another house, there was still enough “evidence” to secure a care order?
So then, social workers have allegedly destroyed thousands of families in order to avoid one more baby P.
And if the defendants are acquitted in the civil court, will they then give the small children back?
Well, unfortunately I very much doubt that. Why? Because the original allegation is still out there and can never be retracted.
Scary, very scary.
Yes, because the police never told the social workers about the child watching pornography, and because the social workers wanted to believe the abuse happened. Protecting children is their job, you see, even though the Children Act says they should keep families together if they can:
Section 17(1) ‘(a)to safeguard and promote the welfare of children within their area who are in need; and (b)so far as is consistent with that duty, to promote the upbringing of such children by their families,’
The defendants were acquitted in the criminal court, to avoid any misunderstanding. You don’t get convicted or acquitted in the family court because it is a civil court. But the sanctions available to it are actually worse than criminal sentences, so can a lower standard of evidence be tolerated?
Yes, comes the reply, because we can’t accept another Baby P case. But these will happen. We need to get over it. It is inevitable. And the injustice and the emotional harm done to parents and children is just as bad, or even worse, if only because of the scale of it.
It is very scary indeed, because although Walsall’s barrister Mr Hadley is now looking at the evidence in this case, tacitly admitting the social workers were incompetent or worse, that is only happening because a journalist (me) took an interest in the case.
How many other cases of injustice are happening in our family courts, because of a broken system and personal agendas, right now?
Thanks for the information which will be helpful in my own situation.
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