HELLO !!! LET ME INTRODUCE MYSELF

Ian Josephs M.A. (Oxon)

ABOLISH FORCED ADOPTION !! 

My name is IAN JOSEPHS . Social services have never hurt me,my family,or my friends,but their wicked abuse of power has simply shocked me into action ! Many will say that I overstate and exaggerate my case  thereby undermining it.I promise you that on the contrary I am understating it as things are now far worse than the public could possibly imagine or accept as credible if I revealed all !After all can anyone answer this question?

HOW CAN SOCIAL SERVICES JUSTIFY THE REMOVAL OF BABIES AT BIRTH FOR "RISK OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE" AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT FORCED ADOPTION BY STRANGERS? 

You don't believe this happens? Just read this SUNDAY TELEGRAPH LEADING ARTICLE!!
 

The unnatural justice of secret family courts
The Sunday Telegraph, 26/08/2007

The Sunday Telegraph highlights today yet another case in which a mother has been threatened with losing her baby to local authority care. The mother had not shown any sign at all of harming her child, for her baby has not yet been born.

The local authority, however, is convinced that there is a possibility that she might harm the child.

To most people, it will seem grotesquely unjust that any child could be removed on such a basis. Northumberland County Council is, however, far from unusual in acting in this way. The courts have endorsed the removal of hundreds of children from their natural parents on the basis that there is a possibility that they might "abuse their child emotionally".

Some of those forcible adoptions are appalling acts of injustice. How can such things happen in Britain? The answer is simple: the courts that enforce the taking away of children from parents on local authority say-so operate in secret. It is illegal to reveal their proceedings, or even their judgments.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant," insisted US Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis. It is because we believe that the only way to improve the decisions made in the family courts is to ensure that they can be scrutinised that The Sunday Telegraph has launched Stop the Secrecy: Open the Family Courts, a campaign to end the ban on reporting any proceedings in the Family Division.

The Government used to recognise the merit in the case for greater openness. But earlier this year, it reversed its commitment to increasing transparency. That was a terrible error.

Children's interests cannot be served by secrecy, for secrecy allows incompetence and injustice to flourish unchecked. We urge the Government to open up the family courts to public scrutiny as soon as possible.

 I live and work in Monte Carlo where I own and run a language school. I have an Oxford University law degree but I am not a solicitor or a barrister. So. . . . Who am I really? and Why do I do what I do? 

I am NOT repeat NOT another "mother Teresa"and I rarely give to charity (in case I end up paying for the director's rolls royce!) but fighting the often brutal actions of Social Services is a cause very close to my heart. Social Services have never hurt me, my family or anyone close to me so I have no personal axe to grind but I HATE THE ABUSE OF POWER and particularly the way the bullies in social services ruthlessly destroy the very families they are supposed to protect. As a matter of principle I never charge a fee and never accept any money whatever for any expenses

My book (229 pages) is available at cost price:- £6.82p + postage,  or download for FREE! by clicking here: www.lulu.com

If you don't have a credit card you can buy a copy directly from the author by sending a cheque or a postal order payable to Ian Josephs for £9.99 (this includes postage) to:

Ian Josephs
HLI
20 Avenue de Fontvieille
MC 98000 Monaco

The public find it hard to believe what is happening to THOUSANDS of parents in the UK.

The following extract from a judgement in the House of Lords confirms that alone in Europe the UK CONTINUES to allow and encourage the barbaric practice of taking children from loving and desperate parents and giving them to strangers for closed and secret adoptions without parental consent

This is the situation!!
 
1:-There really are SECRET COURTS in the UK. 215 MPs of all parties signed the "early day motion" below.

2:;-These courts take children from loving parents who have committed no crime. There are of course parents who brutalise and even torture or kill their children but such parents rarely go to court to recover their children ;they stay as far away from courts as they possibly can ! Common sense surely tells us that parents who care for their children enough to keep fighting for them in numerous very painful court actions ought to stand a good chance of winning them back . The sad fact is however that although judges often  severely criticise social services  in court they nearly always end up cautiously finding for the local authority and against the distraught parents . 
3:-These parents lose their children for ever to adoption by strangers. The children adopted are refused access to records of their birth parents or siblings at least until they are 18, and usually for the rest of their lives; 
4:- Parents are GAGGED and regularly sent to prison in secret proceedings if they reveal what went on in court. 
5:-Establishment judges make decisions to take thousands of babies for risk of possible future emotional abuse.
(Extract from The Times, Aug 23 2007:  “Emotional abuse” has no strict definition in British law. Yet it now accounts for an astounding 21 per cent of all children registered as needing protection, up from 14 per cent in 1997. Last year 6,700 children were put on the child protection register for emotional abuse, compared with only 2,600 for sexual abuse and 5,100 for physical abuse. Both of the latter two categories have been falling steadily. Meanwhile emotional abuse and “neglect” - which replaced the old notion of “grave concern” in 1989 - have been rising. Both are catch-alls. But emotional abuse is especially vague. It covers children who have not been injured, have not complained, and do not come under “emotional neglect”.  
6:-No jury would take babies from mothers because some expert made predictions of their future behaviour.
(Extract from The Sunday Times, Nov 18th 2007):A review is still going on of 700 cases in which bogus forensic scientist Gene Morrison gave evidence. Morrison, 48, from Manchester who was sentenced to five years for fraud in February, admitted he pretended to be an expert witness and bought his qualifications on the internet because it “seemed easier” than getting real ones.

For many of the genuinely qualified experts, legal work is a lucrative sideline, and if they are perceived to be able to “tailor” their evidence convincingly, the commissions keep flowing in. John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP campaigning about the misuse of medical evidence, says fees for a basic written opinion, based on reading through existing files, start at £4,000. If the expert concludes there is a case to answer, they attract court attendance fees as well.
“I have known experts get as much as £28,000 for one report,” said Hemming, who is lobbying for experts to be required to produce the scientific publications on which their opinion is based: “Unless we start using evidence-based evidence in court, we will get nowhere.”) 
7:-Criminals facing 6+ months in prison can demand a jury;parents losing their children for life cannot.
8:-Carefully selected pregnant mothers with vulnerable backgrounds but often with no criminal records or disabilities are told their babies will be taken at birth! Equally carefully selected are the "expert" psychiatists and psychologists who regularly "work" with the family courts and are eager to practice their latest "psychobabble theories". They are therefore only too willing to earn their generous fees and diagnose nearly every unfortunate mother presented to them by social services with a"borderline personality disorder" or to report that she "represents a risk of emotional  abuse" to her children .Sometimes they will even diagnose a really hostile mother as "unfit" to instruct a solicitor! "The Official Solicitor" is then appointed for her! He will inevitably agree with everything the local authority demand and will refuse to let the aggrieved mother say a word !The result in nearly all these cases is that  babies and quite often all the other children from the same families are taken into care for  eventual adoption by strangers.

 You still  believe in "psychobabble"? Just listen to this video ! 

 You Tube video - the Thud Experiment 

THE GOLDEN RULES!!

 Do PLEASE remember the golden rules :- (By all means print this off and keep the copy near at hand if SS approach!Show these rules to your lawyer or social worker to prove that you KNOW your rights!)

REMEMBER THESE EVEN IF YOU FORGET EVERYTHING ELSE I HAVE ADVISED! 

1:- Never contact social services for help or advice .Usually you should not report a partner who batters you or even a stranger who sexually assaults your young child, as if you do the SS will as often as not take your children into care(and later for adoption) to "protect them" from risk !If they have your children and you are fighting to get them back,NEVER NEVER tell social workers how you think you are going to defeat them, or what you are going to do next !Remember ,without mentioning it to "them",that even if your children are "in care" social workers do not have the legal power to stop your children going to a call box to phone you or even meeting you for a meal as long as they return "home" to the fosterers afterwards! 

2:- Never believe a word they say and always insist they put their promises down in writing.Always be pleasant and polite to social workers,and remember that they may deliberately try to provoke you into shouting or violence that they will exaggerate in court leaving you with a criminal record and no children!When they shout at you forget your "pride" and look very hurt saying "why are you being like this to me?" or"I thought you were so nice until now, please don't bully me!" Be very respectful "tongue in cheek", but remember THEY ARE NOT POLICE  so never follow their "helpful advice" especially if they say your only chance of getting your children back is to split from a partner, or parent you love and respect! They will try and turn you against each other as the "divide and rule" principle makes sure you are confused and demoralised when you lose your case  and your children too ! Quite often they arrange deliberately awkward contact times with your children. This can result first in the loss of your job and then as a consequence of that ,your accommodation also.Object firmly and forcefully in court to their plans and fight hard to keep your job and your house or appartment. 

3:- NEVER,NEVER,NEVER, sign any documents they present to you,even if they say "you have to!" Social Workers rely on BLUFF.In reality they have NO POWER and no right to threaten you or give you orders of any kind!Only a COURT via an order from a judge can give you orders,and you always have the opportunity to contest those orders in court either before or after they are given to you.No matter what threats,or promises they make ,you can be 100% sure that if you get intimidated into signing they will break their word and expect you to keep your's! so, DO NOT SIGN !! 

 4:-Never, never agree to let your children go into foster care (especially if they say it is TEMPORARY OR VOLUNTARY) Never "agree" the thresholds even if you are advised that this will ensure the return of your children,because if you do you will have admitted neglecting or abusing your child and the only question left will be to decide if you have really repented and are capable of "change"! Usually the answer is no !Sometimes your own lawyer may tell you to agree the thresholds and/or agree to an interim care order otherwise "you will never see your children again !"That is a wicked lie designed to save the lawyers work and to help you LOSE your children ! Sometimes lawyers will tell you there is no need for you to give evidence as they will speak for you; That way you may find you have lost your children very quickly without being allowed to say a word ,so BEWARE ! Sack your lawyers and represent yourself if they will not let you speak !Never admit to social workers (who are your ENEMIES) that you have been at fault in even the smallest possible way,(they certainly will never admit to you that they were ever at fault !).You must never lie in court,but you should never never admit to any fault on your part unless forced to do so by a direct "yes or no" type question in court.

5:-Never answer questions at case meetings , in court, or when you are being assessed by so called "experts,"(psychiatrists,therapists,psychologists,  counsellors,professionals, and the like) with more than 5 or 6 words (they write down anything unhelpful you may let slip). Try indeed to answer "yes" or "no" whenever possible .NEVER COMPLAIN NEVER EXPLAIN !Complaints are a waste of time and divert you from the more important task of keeping or recovering your children Never explain or elaborate when questioned as this only gives extra material to those who wish to discredit you.Never make angry personal attacks on anybody or threaten to sue the"SS" or police at a later date, as it just makes YOU sound bad.Your whole tone must be one of "sweetness and light" regretting that your children were mistakenly taken and that THEY (not you ) suffered harm and anguish as a result !Your whole case must be that YOUR CHILDREN have suffered harm (not yourself) and that you are taking action for their sake not for your own ! 

6:-Protect yourself against social workers barging uninvited into your home by fitting a small chain inside your front door.This means that if you do not unlatch the chain when you see who is calling that person would have to push the door hard enough to break the chain which would be a "forced entry "and a criminal offence if committed without a document from  the court such as a "recovery order" specifically allowing entry using reasonable force .Unless they have good reason to believe someone in the house is in danger of severe physical harm police also would have to have a warrant before breaking the chain . Usually they will not have one and would have to convince a judge that a serious crime had been or was about to be  committed before one was granted.

7:-If social services request a look at your medical records (probably to try and find something to discredit you) ALWAYS write to any doctor or psychiatrist that has seen you as follows:-

"I respectfully request you to keep all my medical notes strictly confidential as I intend to take legal proceedings  against social services and any other persons who might obtain my medical details without my express authorisation".

8:-Never write a letter to anyone connected to Social Services as you might include something that could damage your case in the family court.Only accept a solicitor if he/she promises to allow you a free hand to speak in court! You should be asked this simple question in the witness box "Have you anything you would like to say to the court?"Without this promise you may be "gagged" and as already explained in rule 4 you can lose your case without being allowed to say a word!

Represent yourself if you can ,but if you really do need the assistance of "professionals" the following contacts can be useful! 

USEFUL CONTACTS:- (If your cause is just these professionals really will be on your side not that of social services !)

SOLICITOR:  

BARRISTER Andrew Scott  described by "The Telegraph" as " the people's champion
http://www.parklaneplowden.co.uk
Parklane Plowden
Tel: 0844 499 5678

BARRISTER, Carol McMillan
Westgate Chambers
64 High Street
Lewes
East Sussex
BN7 1XG
Tel: 01273 480510 

BARRISTER.- Dr John Fox
Chambers of Ami Feder,
Ground Floor,
Lamb Building,
Temple,
London EC4Y 7AS
DX 1038 (Chancery Lane)
Tel: 020 7797 7788
Fax: 020 7353 0535
e-mail: clerks@lambbuilding.co.uk
Out of hours tel: 07721 339232

PSYCHOLOGIST:- Dr Lowenstein tel 02380692621 and website = www.drludwigfredlowenstein.com

Dr Peter Dale (parent assessor)

Email: info@peterdale.co.uk

Phone from UK: (01424) 424504

Phone international: +44 1424 424504

Fax: 08700 941 477

 As a social worker for 15 years i have seen children taken into care unnecessarily,been ordered to lie in court,had the Dept.'s solicitor reconstruct my witness statement to put parent in a bad light,made to exagerate a parents problems or blow up a minor incident.I eventually retired on ill health

ian hughes, bridgend, britain 

Re K D [1998] 1 AC p.812 letter B Lord Templeman stated; ‘The best person to bring up a

 My comments on the recent House of Lords debate concerning identification of sperm or egg donors are as follows:-

All the noble Lords and Ladies seem preoccupied with children conceived by sperm donors or egg donors and the rare possibility of siblings adopted by different families meeting by chance at a later date and marrying !
They completely ignore the most flagrant injustices of all ,those thousands of babies and young children forcibly adopted against the will of parents who love them and want to keep them.These babies and young children are then issued with new fake birth certificates by a conniving and deceitful State !

This is how they "work" it !

• So called "experts" in the secret family courts make crystal ball type predictions of "risk of future emotional harm" or "risk of neglect" .Few families can defend themselves against future "predictions"so compliant family court judges almost inevitably "go along" with social service requests that the children be placed for adoption with strangers!Even when very rarely,parents are cleared by the courts ,once the adoptions have been rushed through they are forbidden to know where their children are or to have any contact with them whether the children want it or not !
  A parliamentary question revealed that more than 200 parents a year are secretly jailed for daring to reveal details of those who accused them in court or for contacting their own offspring contrary to a court order.Parents are often forbidden from knowing whether their offspring are alive or dead ,and if the latter they usually find out a very long time after the deaths occured. 
  Children are all too often split up and adopted by different families. This must be contrary to their human rights as all too often they are forbidden to contact their siblings and may not even know of their existence .If many years later a child needs a replacement kidney or bone marrow transplant the birth family records are rarely revealed and very often declared "lost" .so the unfortunate child whose needs are supposed to be "paramount" is in fact callously left to die for want of a family donor !
  No complicated Bill is needed to remedy this situation. Quite simply every child should have access to their original and truthful birth certificate clearly identifying parents where known whether they be natural or donors.
  The State should outlaw the production of deliberately fake birth certificates and should tell all children the truth about their parentage when asked.Forced and closed adoptions are both recent and equally undesirable innovations.They serve to demonstrate once again that parents should never be deprived of knowing where their children are, or worse still be jailed for trying to find out!

GOOD NEWS!

Thanks in some small measure to this site and all the others who have campaigned adoption targets will be abandoned on April 1st 2008.

Adoption target met
by Hammersmith and Fulham Press Office 10/03/2008
101 children adopted in the last three years

More than 100 children have been adopted in the borough during the last three years, after the Council met a target from central Government target that many experts thought would be unachievable.

The Government target, known as a Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA), challenged the Council to successfully achieve 101 adoptions or secure placements during the last three year period in return for £500,000 of funding.

At the time, the Council felt that the bar was set too high, as in the previous three year period only 71 children had been adopted - a figure that was then considered to be very high.

However, H&F’s adoption team swung into action and pulled out all of the stops in order to meet the target.

 

 

A TRUE STORY

 

T'was the night before Christmas,the four children slept

The "ss" were coming,their mother just wept !

Five burly policemen soon broke down the door,

We've come for your children,we must take all four!

The "ss" have told you "keep perfectly calm"

Your kids are at risk of emotional harm !

So struggling and kicking and screaming with fright

Four little children went off in the night !

The mother sat weeping,her children were lost

Adoption the target,and don't count the cost!

The welfare of children ,that is the thing,

And think of the cash that adoption will bring !

 

IAN JOSEPHS

 

WHO PROFITS FROM THE ADOPTION RACKET?

Local Authorities(stars,beacon status, and financial rewards under public service agreements .(see above)

Very highly paid "professionals"  presume to "assess" the parenting skills of distraught mothers who have had their children taken into care.(around £3000 per 2-3 hour session ),"legal aid lawyers" (a case in the family courts costs an average of £70,000 per day so total legal costs of over £500,000 for one case are not unusual! ,)Therapists, psychiatrists , and counsellors who are paid around £3000 for a few hours work eagerly predict that parents might "emotionally abuse" their children at some time in the future.  Tame medical experts  somehow always side with social services against the parents.(They also receive around £3000 for one afternoon session plus a report)

Foster parents(up to £400per week per child plus allowances for Xmas and holidays)Special schools charging up to £7000 per week per child(as shown on tv channel 4,) Adoption and fostering agencies charging up to £18,000 per placement.

 

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Back to Barristers 'exploiting misery' as fees in family law cases rise 25% in 5 years
Daily Mail Online
June 19th 2008

Barristers have been making millions of extra pounds from the misery of families and children caught up in the family courts, according to new figures released by ministers yesterday.

Fees paid out of taxpayer-funded legal aid to barristers in family court cases have gone up by almost a third in five years and have now reached nearly £100million a year, they showed.

And there have been big increases in claims by barristers for obscure special payments that provide 'uplift' and 'bolt-ons' to their basic charges.

Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice lifted a corner of the blanket of official secrecy that surrounds the family courts to disclose that barristers who appear in them can claim bonuses including bizarre 'court bundle payments'.

These give barristers extra money if there are more than 176 pages to their court papers and extra still if there are over 350 pages. Yet another court bundle payment is paid if a barrister carries over 700 pages of papers.

Court bundle payments alone meant taxpayers were charged an extra £8.6million by barristers last year.

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The Times on line
June 19th 2008

The Bar Council, which represents nearly 15,000 barristers in England and Wales, will announce its proposals in a paper before an all-party meeting of MPs tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Legal Services Commission, which runs the legal aid scheme, has just released figures to show how much barristers are earning from legal aid work.

Crispin Passmore, the commission’s policy director for civil legal aid, said that the sum spent on barristers’ fees since 2003-04 had risen from £71 million to nearly £100 million.

The number of barristers earning more than £100,000 from family legal aid work had gone up by 14 per cent in the 12 months between mid2005 and mid2006, he added.

“The average annual earnings from family legal aid work is £140,000 – and that doesn’t include any privately paid work they might do. So we are not talking about the minimum wage.”

 

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Do we get value for money? Well this is what the BBC had to say!

Wednesday 15th MAY 2002

 

Can children in care avoid prison?

David Akinsanya was raised by the state and in a special BBC Two documentary he asks why so many kids leaving the care system end up in prison.

Government statistics show that 49 per cent of children in care go straight to prison. With 56,000 children in the British care system today, that means 28,000 are set to receive custodial sentences.

David Akinsanya believes the problem lies with the care system itself.

He says the care system is inflexible and does not offer appropriate care to young people.

Research found that 42 per cent of young prostitutes had been in care at some point

The "INDEPENDENT" 14 December 2006 

The Government's own research highlights how the care system is not simply a negligent parent but at times probably more dangerous than the family from which some children have been taken. A study commissioned by the Home Office has looked at the link between hard drug use, sex work and various vulnerability factors. The results are astonishing, if not heartbreaking.

Less than 1 per cent of the child population is looked after by the state, but the research found that 42 per cent of young women prostitutes interviewed had been in care at some point in their lives. "This is an extraordinary figure, which demonstrates that looked after children are very vulnerable to involvement in drug use and sexual abuse through prostitution," the report concluded.

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2 children in care die of neglect each week
The People, 22 June 2008
By David Collins

Children placed in care are three times more likely to die than others, a shock report has revealed.

In one year, 16 in 10,000 vulnerable youngsters died in care. The national death rate for children was five in every 10,000.

The study by the Department for Children, Schools and Families showed that 800 youngsters have died in care over the last ten years - an average of two a week.

Malnutrition and diseases were the main causes of death.

Last year 12,000 kids in care had no immunisations, 9,600 had no health check ups and 8,400 never saw a dentist.

By law children should get checks within two weeks of going into care. In some local authority areas, less than 50 per cent do.

A Children and Young Persons Bill, which should improve matters, goes before MPs tomorrow.

Tim Loughton, Shadow Minister for Children, said: "Despite the efforts of beleaguered social workers, the system is failing."

---------------------

Extract from the Telegraph:-

Official figures show that only six per cent of the 60,000 children in care gain five or more A* to C GCSEs and more than a third are not entered for a single GCSE.

Conviction rates for young people in care are three times the rate for other juveniles. One in four girls leaving care is pregnant or already a mother. A recent case which caused outrage involved a 12-year-old living in a children's home in Blackburn who became pregnant while working as a prostitute.

Dismal outcomes are the norm despite the £2.5 billion a year spent looking after them. It costs £100,000 a year to keep a child in a children's home, more than four times the fees at top private schools such as Eton or Winchester.

Fostering can cost up to £30,000 a year, compared with the £7,500 a year that state boarding schools charge parents for accommodation, with the £5,000 cost of education covered by the local authorities.

  Harriet Harman (Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs) Link to this | Hansard source

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point, which she has put to me in a written question, so I know what the answer is. Last year something like 200 people were sent to prison by the family courts, which happens in complete privacy and secrecy. The idea that people are sent to prison without any reports of the proceedings makes even more important the work that we are undertaking with the family courts, and with the important intervention of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, to open them up so that they act in the public interest while maintaining personal privacy

Only in the SECRET family courts are punishments(losing their children to long term fostercare or worse still adoption by strangers) imposed on persons(parents) who have neither committed a crime nor even been accused of committing any crime!  THERE IS NO OTHER CASE IN UK LAW WHERE THIS  CAN HAPPEN!

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British justice: a family ruined
A chilling example of our secret State where a mother and child are forced into hiding
by Camilla Cavendish,The Times, February 21, 2008

Last autumn a small English congregation was rocked by the news that two of its parishioners had fled abroad. A 56-year-old man had helped his pregnant wife to flee from social workers, who had already taken her son into care and were threatening to seize their baby.

Most people had no idea why. For the process that led this couple to such a desperate act was entirely secret. The local authority had warned the mother not to talk to her friends or even her MP. The judge who heard the arguments from social services sat in secret. The open-minded social workers who had initially been assigned to sort out a custody battle between the woman and her previous husband were replaced by others who seemed determined to build a guilty case against her. That is how the secret State operates. A monumental injustice has been perpetrated in this quiet corner of England; our laws are being used to try to cover it up.

I will call this couple Hugh and Sarah. Neither they nor their families have ever been in trouble with the law, as far as I know. Sarah's only fault seems to have been to suffer through a violent and volatile first marriage, which produced a son. When the marriage ended, the boy was taken into temporary foster care for a few months - as a by-product of the marriage breakdown and against her will - while she “sorted her life out” and found them a new home. But even as she cleared every hurdle set by the court, social workers dreamt up new ones. The months dragged by. A psychologist said the boy was suffering terribly in care and was desperate to come home. Sarah's mother and sister, both respected professionals with good incomes, apparently offered to foster or adopt him. The local authority did not even deign to reply.

For a long time, Sarah and her family seem to have played along. At every new hearing they thought that common sense would prevail. But it didn't. The court appeared to blame her for not ending her marriage more quickly, which had put strain on the boy, while social workers seemed to insist that she now build a good relationship with the man she had left. Eventually, she came to believe that the local authority intended to have her son adopted. She also seems to have feared that they would take away her new baby, Hugh's baby, when it was born. One night in September they fled the country with the little boy. When Hugh returned a few days later, to keep his business going and his staff in jobs, he was arrested.

Many people would think this man a hero. Instead, he received a far longer sentence - 16 months for abduction - than many muggers. This kind of sentence might be justified, perhaps, to set an example to others. But the irony of this exemplary sentence is that no one was ever supposed to know the details. (I am treading a legal tightrope writing about it at all.) How could a secret sentence for a secret crime deter anyone?

Sarah's baby has now been born, in hiding. I am told that the language from social services has become hysterical. But if the State was genuinely concerned for these two children, it would have put “wanted” pictures up in every newspaper in Europe.

It won't do that, of course, because to name the woman and her children would be to tear a hole in the fabric of the secret State, a hole we could all see through. I would be able to tell you her side of the story, the child's side of the story. I would be able to tell you every vindictive twist of this saga. And the local authority knows perfectly well how it would look. So silence is maintained.

And very effective it is too. The impotence is the worst thing. The way that perfectly decent individuals are gagged and unable to defend themselves undermines a fundamental principle of British law. I have a court order on my desk that threatens all the main actors in this case with dire consequences if they talk about it to anyone.

Can that really be the way we run justice in a country that was the fount of the rule of law? At the heart of this story is a little boy who was wrenched from the mother he loves, bundled around in foster care and never told why, when she appears to have been perfectly capable of looking after him. When she had relatives who were perfectly capable of doing so. In the meantime, he was becoming more and more troubled and unhappy. To find safety and love, that little boy has had to leave England.

What does that say about our country? The public funds the judges, the courts, the social workers. It deserves to know what they do. That does not mean vilifying all social workers, or defending every parent. But it does mean ending the presumption of guilt that infects so many family court hearings. It does mean asking why certain local authorities seem unable to let go of children whose parents have resolved their difficulties. It does mean knowing how social workers could have got away with failing to return this particular boy, after his mother had met all the criteria set by a judge at the beginning. It is simply unacceptable that social services have put themselves above the law.

We need these people to be named, and to hear in their words what happened. We need to open up the family courts. We need to tear down the wall of secrecy that has forced a decent woman to live as a fugitive, to save her little boy from a life with strangers, used like a pawn in a game of vengeance. Even if the local authority were to drop its case, it is hard to see how Sarah could ever trust them enough to return. At home, for their God-fearing congregation, the question is simple: what justice can ever be done behind closed doors? And in whose name?

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Jailed: The man who helped his wife flee abroad as social workers threatened to take their baby
By FIONA BARTON, Daily Mail 7th Feb 2008

A father is in jail and his wife is in hiding abroad with her children after he helped them flee the country to escape social services, it emerged yesterday.

The businessman's wife was heavily pregnant with their first child - and was terrified the baby would be taken at birth by social workers - when he drove his family to Dover, and then on to Paris.

She had a second reason for fleeing - she believed her eight-year-old son from a previous marriage was to be adopted against her wishes.

Her 56-year-old husband was arrested on his return to Britain, and later jailed for 16 months for abducting the eight-year-old, known as Child S.

The boy's mother, who is a professional woman in her 40s but cannot be identified for legal reasons, has since given birth prematurely to a girl and is struggling to cope far from friends and family.

Her plight raises further disturbing questions about the secret family courts which only last week were in the spotlight when social workers illegally snatched a newborn baby from its mother.

Such cases are shrouded in the heaviest secrecy - with families threatened with jail if they discuss their fears that their children are being removed unjustly.

But the story of the father and his family in hiding can be revealed for the first time because he appealed in a criminal case - which can be reported - begging for his 16-month jail sentence to be reduced.

His plea to the High Court was dismissed and the father, who has never seen his baby daughter, was led away in tears.

A teacher friend of the father was also in tears.

The friend said: "This isn't justice. They are a law-abiding family with respect for the police, but putting him in prison for protecting his family makes the law an ass. What good does it serve?"

The three appeal judges were told yesterday how Child S's parents had separated in 2004 after a volatile and violent marriage.

The mother claims she was told the boy would be taken into temporary foster care until she "sorted her life out".

But when she asked for his return, social services refused.

After months of legal battles, a family court judge sided with the council's plan to put the boy up for enforced adoption. By this time, the mother was pregnant.

A friend said: "She was led to believe by social services she would have no chance of keeping the child she was carrying, which is outrageous. She was in despair."

According to papers before the appeal court, she then made contact with her son at school last September and whispered instructions to him through the playground fence.

In the early hours, Child S "crept out" of his foster home to meet his mother and stepfather and the escape plan was under way.

The mother left a note which claimed: "We had to go." The court was told that detectives believed the mother and children were in Spain or France.

Dismissing the appeal, Mr Justice Bennett acknowledged the "powerful emotions" involved, but said: "Such proceedings taken by a local authority must be respected by parents.

"Those who act must expect a prison sentence because a real punishment is called for and to deter others who might be subject to the same pressures."

The judge expressed his disbelief that the father did not know the whereabouts of his wife.

The father - who has adult children from a previous marriage - is being destroyed by prison, a friend said outside court.

She added: "He is absolutely shell-shocked by the actions of the courts. Basically, they have said you are not allowed to be human in your responses.

"What parent wouldn't act to stop their child being taken from them? He has aged ten years and gone grey with the worry of it all."

Free the 'Grandfather One'
Is it really in the public interest that a grandparent is jailed for not avoiding his grandson?
Camilla Cavendish, The Times, December 13, 2007

Two MPs have put down an early day motion in the House of Commons to bring attention to what they believe is a miscarriage of justice. It notes that a man named Charles Roy Taylor has been sent to prison for 20 months for being in contact with his stepgrandson. It “wonders if this is a good use of scarce prison resources; and calls for the Secretary of State for Justice to consider whether he should be released for Christmas”. Jack Straw no doubt has bigger things on his mind. And no story like this is ever as simple as it looks. But it deserves attention.

Charles Roy Taylor is a 71-year-old with a heart condition. He knew that a jail sentence was the penalty he might pay if he did not take steps to avoid his stepgrandson. But this seems desperately unfair. The teenager, whom we shall call John, has been in care since his mother died of an overdose. He has been phoning his grandparents and running away to see them for some time. In the end, social services became concerned that the grandparents were “undermining the care plan” by continuing to see John. It does not appear to be clear to the grandparents what the care plan is. But it does not seem to include them, even though they could presumably be John's first port of call when he leaves the care system at 18.

It is not the local authority's fault that this child had a difficult childhood. In taking responsibility for him, social workers were doing their best. Neither he nor his grandparents sound like the easiest people to deal with. But as in so many cases of this kind, bitterness between the family and the authorities appears to have escalated into a ludicrous situation, which simply cannot be in the best interests of the child.

After a great deal of argy-bargy that I cannot go into for legal reasons, Mr Taylor last year gave an undertaking not to communicate with John until he was 18. But asking a man not to pick up the phone to a child, not to take him in when he turns up at the front door, is a harsh demand. It is tantamount to asking him to deny that the child exists, when what that child may need most is attention.

In stalking cases, when Person A is ordered to avoid Person B, it is usually at the explicit request of Person B, who fears assault. In this case, Person B was apparently desperate to see his grandparents. He seems to see them as his best hope. So in whose interests was such an order? If he has broken his undertaking, Mr Taylor has surely been responding as humanely as most of us would. A jail sentence seems wholly disproportionate.

When I first learnt of this case I felt that there must be more to it. That perhaps the grandparents were suspected of abuse. I can find no evidence of any such allegation. Indeed, the authorities initially seemed happy to leave them in contact with John. What appears to have happened is that the exchanges between the family and social workers became increasingly bitter, all of whom no doubt believed themselves to be in the right.

The council cannot comment on individual cases. It will say only that “Mr Taylor was sentenced by the High Court after he breached a court order”. It cannot comment on John's treatment in care. John seems unhappy. He has apparently asked to be discharged. But his voice can only be heard within the system, a system he seems determined to rebel against.

There is a growing campaign on the internet to release Mr Taylor. This has two parts. The first is that a 20-month jail sentence is preposterous when the prisons are so overcrowded that dangerous criminals are being released early. The second is that Mr Taylor was allegedly committed to jail in a “secret court”. This seems unlikely. But it is an allegation that is made frequently. Legally, you cannot send someone to jail in a secret court. In practice, it is questionable whether a judge sitting in a family court from which press and public are excluded, who declares the court open for a few minutes to pronounce sentence, is really “open”.

This matters, because the view of the legal profession increasingly seems to be that the less we know the better. The justification for keeping family courts closed, despite the recommendations of the Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee, is to protect children's privacy. Yet this argument is no longer confined to the family courts. It is increasingly being trotted out in criminal cases too.

In the past month, one court has ruled that the defendants in a witchcraft trial, who were alleged to have done unspeakable things to children, could not be named in case this led to the identification of their victims. Another court banned publication of anything about a mother accused of poisoning her child with salt, in case the information affected her surviving child. The Times has recently succeeded in overturning yet another ruling, that a man who pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children could not be named in case his relatives might suffer. The Court of Appeal found that the man should be named, and that the attempts to restrict the proceedings were invalid.

The law must not become a secret process. Some lawyers seem convinced that the media want to identify vulnerable children, but it is always possible to write these stories without doing so. Seeing that justice is done is a fundamental part of law.

What is sad is that our elaborate system of child protection, which is designed to put children first, has sometimes become a way of avoiding accountability. The two MPs are right to ask whose interests Mr Taylor's jailing serves. Presumably, the last thing John wants is for his grandfather to be in jail. They are both victims of a system that asks us to take on trust that it knows best. But prison is surely the wrong place for Charles Roy Taylor.

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How social workers took away our children for 11 months without a shred of evidence
By SUE REID, Daily Mail
9 May 2008

Enjoying the sunshine at a park near their home, the Aston family cling closely to each other as if to make sure they will never be prised apart again. Jodie, a bubbly ten-year-old, entwines her arms around her brother, Luke, who was 12 last Thursday, while both children smile fondly at their parents, Craig and Donna.
Yet the happy scene is full of poignancy. Until very recently, this Yorkshire couple were trapped in what a High Court judge described this week as "every parent's nightmare".

For an interminable 11 months, Jodie and Luke were removed from their home because their parents faced accusations from doctors of the most hideous crime imaginable: sexually molesting their own daughter.

They were permitted to visit their children only under strict supervision, for just three hours a week. All letters which they sent to Jodie and Luke were vetted by social workers - making them feel like criminals.

What's more, they were cruelly ordered not to say "I love you" to either boy or girl. Throughout this ordeal, the couple always protested their innocence and were relieved beyond belief. When Mr Justice Holman cleared them of any wrongdoing. He ordered the children's return, insisting that his ruling be made public so lessons are learned by doctors, social workers and lawyers working in the child protection service.

In a landmark judgment, he warned that even two decades after the infamous Cleveland child abuse scandal, parents are still being wrongly accused of molesting their sons and daughters.

The Cleveland controversy was Britain's biggest and first mass child abuse scare.

In 1987, 121 children were taken into state care in North-East England over five months after abuse was diagnosed on the basis of physical examinations carried out by a controversial paediatrician called Marietta Higgs.

The parents were often wrongly condemned - just like the Astons today - without their children being listened to or their family background being taken into account.

The doctors in the Eighties had relied on the discredited sign called Reflex Anal Dilatation (RAD), said to indicate sexual abuse.

Last year, the controversial sign was condemned as unreliable by the Government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, who admitted that its use had led to mistakes in Cleveland.

Everyone hoped the lessons had been learnt from Cleveland. But now the shocking extent of young Jodie Aston's ordeal is becoming clear, it seems that is tragically not the case.

Mr Justice Holman said it was inevitable that Jodie was now "emotionally damaged" by her experiences.

After the private hearing at Leeds High Court, he said: "Unless there is clear diagnostic evidence of abuse (for example, the presence of semen or a foreign body internally), purely medical assessments and opinions should not be allowed to predominate. Even 20 years after Cleveland, I wonder if the lessons have fully been learned." The importance of this judgment cannot be overstated. Jodie's father, a 33-year-old railway signals' engineer, courageously agreed to talk for the first time about the case.

He said: "I hope the judge's words will rein in doctors, and help other parents accused of sexually abusing their children without any real proof." What happened to the Aston family seems incredible in 21st-century England. They are now seeking legal advice in the hope that the General Medical Council, the doctors' disciplinary body, will investigate their case.

Yesterday, Leeds' Safeguarding Children's Board launched a review into Jodie's case, saying "all relevant, accurate facts" must be taken into account in future child abuse inquiries.

Officials said it was too early to reveal how many other children have been taken into care or even adopted, as a result of suspected sexual abuse over recent years.

However, the Mail is aware of two other families in the city who have had their children removed, largely on the basis of the RAD testing technique, yet who insist they are entirely innocent.

The Astons' nightmare began when they took Jodie, then aged eight, to Leeds General Infirmary's casualty department on a Monday evening in August 2005. She had scraped her groin on a small wall while playing with friends.

She was examined by doctors in Leeds at least eight times. Photographs and videos - later shown in court - were taken of her naked body again and again.

The girl was referred to the community paediatrics department at the city's St James's University Hospital on the following Thursday. Nothing was found to be amiss after an intimate examination. But two months later, Jodie was changing into her pyjamas after school when her mother saw a spot of blood on her pants.

Jodie, who was prone to eczema and had visible raw splits in the skin of her hands and arms, was again taken to casualty before being referred for a second time to the paediatrics unit at St James's.

The hospital has a busy child protection team, overseen by the respected paediatric consultant Dr Christopher Hobbs.

Significantly, he is an original pioneer of the RAD technique in this country. In June 1986, just a year before the Cleveland controversy broke, Dr Hobbs and his colleague Jane Wynne introduced young Marietta Higgs to this new way of diagnosing child molestation during a Leeds' medical conference.

By looking at and probing a child's bottom, the paediatricians claimed they could see if there was reflex anal dilatation and - therefore - abuse.

Dr Higgs enthusiastically embraced the technique, provoking the Cleveland crisis.

However, 80 per cent of the "victims" were later returned to their parents because they had not been hurt at all.

Since then, the nagging doubts about the technique have grown. Today, it is well-known that RAD can appear normally and spontaneously in any child.

According to some paediatricians - notably an expert named Professor Astrid Hegar from America, where RAD has been abandoned in some states - half of all children who have not been sexually abused show the same "tell-tale" sign when their bottoms are examined.

That means, of course, that almost any family taking their child to hospital or the doctor's surgery can be accused of child abuse.

Yet in Britain, many child doctors - including Dr Hobbs - rely on the technique as an important piece of many pieces in the jigsaw of diagnosing child abuse.

Even before 1987 - at the height of the Cleveland crisis - both Hobbs and Wynne were discovering high numbers of child sex abuse cases in Leeds by using RAD.

According to the doctors' research, published in the medical journal The Lancet, 94 boys and 243 girls were diagnosed as sexual abuse victims in a previous two-year period. The paper - still quoted in medical literature - says that eight in ten of the boys, and a quarter of the girls, had "anal signs".

Astonishingly, in half of all cases, the abusers were deemed to be the children's natural father and - even more bizarrely - five per cent were women. A quarter of the Leeds adults involved were convicted by the courts. The two doctors wrote at the time: "Sexual abuse is emerging as a major child and mental health problem." So it was against this background - in a city whose medical establishments were at the centre of the RAD debate - that Jodie Aston was taken by her mother to hospital. It was the first of many visits and, during one, on November 24, 2005, she met Dr Hobbs.

Although he did not physically examine Jodie, at the end of the appointment he and a fellow paediatrician said that they suspected child abuse. It was a terrible moment for Jodie's mother, Donna.

She says today: "I couldn't believe it. I began to cry. I walked out of there not knowing what to think. Jodie saw that I was quiet, and thought she had done something wrong. I waited in the car park for Craig to come and pick us up.

"I asked Jodie if her Daddy had done anything to her. She said "no" and I believed her. But when I got in the car, Craig saw that I had been crying. He asked me what was wrong and I just mumbled something about child abuse because I didn't want to upset Jodie." At home, after the children had gone to bed, Donna had to ask her husband a question that no wife should have to. Craig said he had not touched his daughter.

"I was being accused of something worse than murder," Craig said this week.

"From that point, we began to watch the children like hawks.

"We did not allow them even to go to the shops nearby. Luke said we were treating them like babies," added Donna, 34. However, the family remained under suspicion. Donna was told by the authorities that she was also considered the potential abuser of her daughter.

The following March, Jodie faced another assessment with Dr Hobbs. Just a few weeks earlier, she had again come home with a small blood spot on her pants.

This time, the paediatrician conducted a physical examination, which included RAD. He wrote in his report afterwards: "I feel that the time has come for me to involve social services, because I am concerned about the possibility that she may have been sexually abused."

The family were trapped. The doctors ignored Donna's suggestion that eczema might be the cause of the blood spots. Meanwhile, social workers began visiting the family regularly.

Overwhelmed with worry, Craig and Donna were advised to get an independent second medical opinion on Jodie's condition. Therefore, their GP arranged for a doctor called Ruth Skelton to examine their daughter. This proved to be a disastrous move.

Dr Skelton had been trained by Dr Hobbs. As Mr Justice Holman commented in his judgment: "In my view, the selection of her was deeply regrettable. Dr Skelton lacked the complete independence that is required for a second opinion in these sorts of circumstances.

"She was being asked to review the previous opinion of someone who was a more senior colleague, then working daily at the same hospital, and who had been her own teacher."

It emerged that Dr Skelton had discussed Jodie's case with Dr Hobbs before the so-called independent examination took place in March last year.

Dr Skelton concluded that she could spot RAD. According to her report, she said that Jodie had "been sexually abused chronically, over a long period, both anally and probably vaginally . . . I feel that this child is not protected at all at present." Both Jodie and her elder brother, Luke, were taken away from the parents the same day. It was arranged that they would live with their maternal grandparents, aged 77 and 78, three miles away from their home in Armley, a suburb of Leeds. Donna still finds it hard to relate the story as she sits with the children and Craig in the family's neat sitting room.

She says: "The social workers came at 9.30am to tell us they wanted to remove Jodie and Luke. It was a Thursday. Jodie and Luke were at school. They never came home for almost a year.

"I packed a few things for the first night: toothbrushes, pyjamas, a big bear toy that was Jodie's favourite. Then I had to come home alone.

"Craig was in a worse state than me. I thought he was going to harm himself. We woke up in night crying. We hugged each other because it was as if the children were dead."

This week, she said: "There were more tears, but we had to cope for the sake of the children. On Christmas Day last year, we were only allowed to see them for one hour." Yet the family's fortunes were changing.

Craig's lawyers had instructed the American paediatrician, Professor Hegar, to give her views. She has examined 40,000 children for suspected abuse during a 28-year career. She believes that a family's history - and a host of other factors - are vital when deciding if a child has been molested.

Professor Hegar studied the medical reports and photographs of Jodie. She said: "I believe that the medical examiners in this case have relied heavily on Reflex Anal Dilatation as diagnostic of sexual abuse.

"This is a common finding in up to 49 per cent of children who have not been abused. There is no research ... that supports the use of RAD as a sensitive or specific finding for sexual abuse."

Professor Hegar also suggested that dermatologists should examine Jodie to find another cause of her bleeding. One skin expert diagnosed that a small split in her skin, caused by eczema, may have produced the suspect spots of blood on Jodie's underwear.

Her crucial views were also heard by video link during the hearing into Jodie's case. Afterwards, Mr Justice Holman said Donna and Craig Aston are intelligent, responsible parents.

During the hearing, he met both their "bright and well-mannered" children, giving them chocolate biscuits and talking to them for nearly an hour.

Jodie told him that no one had touched her at home, or at primary school. Her brother Luke declared, quite spontaneously, that it was "all a big mistake".

He added: "We have got the best mum and dad. Why would they abuse my little sister?"

Both of the Aston children said they loved their parents dearly and only wanted to go home. Now, at last, thanks to an enlightened judge, they have finally got their wish.

But how many other families who suffered similarly disgraceful misdiagnoses, more than 20 years after it had been presumed the lessons of Cleveland had been learnt, are still fighting to clear their names? 

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My baby had cancer but social workers falsely accused me of child abuse and took all three of my children
By SUE REID
Daily Mail, 22 February 2008

One November afternoon at just after two o'clock, Louise Mason stood in a hospital ward and kissed her 11-week- old baby goodbye.

She had dressed the little girl with care, packing a suitcase of tiny clothes and soft toys. Inside, she had placed a handwritten letter to the foster parents who would look after her in the future.

On that day five years ago, Louise felt as though her heart would burst.

"I wrote down everything about my daughter," she told me this week.

"I said she had colicky attacks at six in the evening, and should be rocked until she slept. I said she needed to be coaxed to take her milk."

After writing that sad note, the young mother from Northampton was forced to hand over the baby girl to social workers, who carried her off to her new home.

Louise, 32, then returned to her house, with its empty cot, in the seaside city of Derry, Northern Ireland. It must have been one of the loneliest journeys of her life.

The baby girl - now aged five - has never been returned to this wholly innocent mother who, because she was wrongly accused of harming her baby, also subsequently had two other children taken away from her.

This week, though, a High Court revealed there had been a terrible miscarriage of justice, and ordered that Louise must be reunited with all her children.

Furthermore, the judge, Mr Justice Gillon - in an age where children are removed from their parents by family courts sitting in secret - took the extremely unusual step of allowing Louise to be named, and for the tragic details of her case to become public.

In a statement he said: "The workings of the family justice system in this case are matters of public interest, and do merit public discussion. Public confidence in the process is necessary, and the emergence of the changing circumstances of this case merits an open discussion."

He went on to list the extraordinary catalogue of events which began when, worried out of her mind, Louise took her sickly month- old baby daughter to her GP, begging for help.

These shocking details shed light on a family justice system normally hidden from view.

Of course, there are parents who harm their children and deserve the full punishment of the law.

But in the family courts, thousands of children are removed from their parents to adoption or foster care in deeply dubious hearings which never become public.

If anyone speaks about the details - to a neighbour, to a friend, to a relative - they are in contempt of court.

Crucially, the courts' culture of secrecy means that if a social worker lies, or fabricates notes, or a doctor makes a mistake, then no one finds out, and there is no retribution.

It is only because Louise was charged with a criminal offence in an open and public court - like other innocent mothers wrongly accused of infanticide, such as Angela Cannings and the late Sally Clark - that her harrowing story can be heard.

Louise was born in Northampton, the youngest of three. Her father had a plastering business, and her mother raised a close, caring family.

By the time she was in her 20s, Louise was running a successful restaurant. A few years later, she met her boyfriend, who came from Derry, and the couple had a baby. They moved to Northern Ireland to set up home.

Louise says now: "I came here in 2001, thinking Derry was the perfect place for children to grow up."

The couple had a second baby - another girl, born a healthy 7lb. But then she and her partner split up, leaving Louise a single mother.

"I was quite able to cope with the toddler and the baby, who was very placid," explains Louise. "I was a full-time mother and proud of it."

Then came the bombshell. One Saturday, when the baby was just four weeks old, Louise noticed that she was looking very ill, as though she was about to collapse.

In fact, it is now known that without medical care she would have died within an hour.

"I rushed my daughter around to our local doctor, who immediately rang the Derry hospital. I hurried there with this little bundle in my arms.

"The baby was taken off me in the children's ward. I next saw her five hours later, at 7pm.

"One of the doctors then sat me down and said: 'It is touch and go'" The team mentioned right away that it might be cancer. I remember that as though it were yesterday," says Louise, crying this week at the memory.

"The next morning, they again said cancer was suspected."

A day later, on the Sunday, the baby was taken by ambulance to the Royal Belfast hospital 60 miles away. She had a blood transfusion and tests. By the Tuesday, three days after the emergency admission, Louise was hoping that she would get a proper diagnosis.

But further investigation had showed that the left kidney and the area around it was swollen, and among medical staff there was a wide variety of opinion about the cause. Before long, doctors became highly suspicious that this was, in fact, caused by an injury.

Louise was called into a room and confronted by a doctor.

"He asked me if I had done anything to hurt my baby. He said he had called the social services and the police. I promised him I had done nothing to my child."

Her words fell on deaf ears. Back home, her elder daughter, who was being cared for by a neighbour, was collected by social workers and taken into foster care.

Yet still the trusting Louise thought it would all be sorted out in a few days. How wrong she was.

Seven weeks later, on November 15, 2002, the police contacted her.

"They asked me to attend the police station for an interview under caution. They said I was suspected of grievous bodily harm with intent."

The interview dragged on. At lunchtime, Louise was put in a cell. She was distraught.

"I was frozen with fright," she recalls.

"I kept telling them that there was no bruising or redness found on the baby, so how could I have hurt her?"

Four days later, worse news followed: her baby daughter was to be taken into foster care, too.

At the hospital, she was told by social workers to get the 11-week-old baby she was accused of harming ready. Her fingers trembling, Louise dressed her baby and kissed her goodbye.

From then on, she was allowed to see her children at a special supervised centre for only four-and-a-half hours a week.

They were delivered to the centre from their foster homes by social workers, and then taken away again.

"The eldest one could remember me," says Louise, "but I had hardly had a chance to bond with the new baby before she was taken from me."

All the time, Louise faced a barrage of accusations. The authorities claimed that she was a potential killer.

A leading member of the social work team told her: "I do not think you are safe to be left in a room alone with any boy or girl."

In January 2004 - a little over year later - a formal application to take the children into care was made in the family division of the Northern Ireland High Court in Belfast.

The medical evidence given by five doctors from the hospitals was damning. They said Louise had deliberately hurt the baby girl with great force.

"It was then that they began to make noises about adoption,' says Louise. 'My legal team were fighting hard, but it was a battle we could not win because we did not have the medical evidence." The children remained with their foster parents.

That autumn, Louise was brought before a criminal court in Derry facing two charges of causing grievous bodily harm to the baby girl.

It was only then that anyone listened to her.

In an emotional outburst, she blurted out to the jury that she wanted to take a lie detector test to prove that she had done nothing wrong. It was the turning point. The jury believed her, and in November 2004 she was acquitted of the charges. However, her children remained in care.

Meanwhile, the story of the mother begging for a lie detector test was reported in the local Press. By chance, the consultant radiologist who had treated Louise's baby girl at the local hospital on the very first day she was brought in, read the article and was appalled.

He remembered the case and the wide divergence of medical opinion, yet had never known that Louise was under suspicion or that she was to have been prosecuted. He was convinced then that the child was suffering from a rare form of cancer of the left kidney, called neuroblastoma, which could have caused the bleeding.

Dr D - as he was called in Mr Justice Gillon's judgment this week - contacted Louise's solicitor and offered to help clear her name.

"It was a miracle," Louise told me.

"That doctor was my guardian angel. The last years have been very hard for me. I was pilloried. It felt like torture having my children taken from me."

Even though she had been acquitted, the social workers appeared to ignore the verdict.

But Dr D told Louise's solicitor that he was struck by the "power" of her request to the jury to have a lie detector test.

He offered to help, suggesting that a team of independent paediatricians, including experts on kidneys, cancer and non-accidental injury, should be asked to give their own opinions on the findings of the five hospital doctors.

Significantly, the independent experts thought that the baby's internal bleeding had occurred naturally. And when their testimony was produced by Louise's lawyers at a Court of Appeal hearing, the judges quashed the family court rulings.

As a result, in June last year the Foyle Health and Social Services Trust, which covers Derry, said it no longer intended to pursue their action to keep Louise's children in care or have them adopted. It was an almighty climbdown.

By then, however, another tragedy had happened on the say-so of the social workers.

In 2005, a year after she had been acquitted, Louise had became pregnant for a third time.

She is reluctant to talk about the father, or name him, although they are no longer together - but at Christmas time, when she was heavily pregnant, the social workers called and told her they planned to take the latest addition away from her at birth.

"I couldn't believe my ears," says Louise.

"I had been declared not guilty in a criminal court - yet they still had both my children and were wanting my new baby. It was torture."

The baby was born early in 2006. True to their word, Louise had just given birth and was trying to breastfeed when the social workers arrived at Altnagelvin Hospital, Derry.

The nurses, on the instructions of the social workers, took the newborn baby away to safety in another ward while Louise's solicitor remonstrated with them that it was cruel to do such a thing.

It was five hours before the baby was returned to Louise in the maternity unit.

Ten days later, when she was about to leave hospital, the social workers returned and seized the child, placing the baby with foster parents.

Only recently - following the collapse of the Social Services Trust case - has Louise been given back the baby, and her eldest child, too.

She has missed a whole chunk of their early years.

But perhaps the saddest thing of all is that the little girl who was so sick as a baby may never return home again. She has known no mother or father apart from her foster parents, and has bonded with them very closely.

Although she has now recovered - significantly, it was a form of cancer that can go into remission of its own accord, without the need for surgery or chemotherapy - her left kidney does not function normally.

But she is happy with the couple whom she calls her Mummy and Daddy.

Recently, as part of a phased plan to reunite her permanently with her natural family, she came back to stay with Louise for a night.

"She cried terribly for her foster parents all the evening - it made us all unhappy," says Louise, sadly.

"She knows me, but will only call me Mummy Louise. It breaks me into pieces.

"She may never come home and live with me again because she wants to be with the only people she has ever recognised as her parents. It may be cruel to take her back now."

It is, by any standards, a tragic indictment of the child protection system.

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What do our  MPs who represent us in parliament think about all this?

Prime Minister Responds on Adoption
Q6. [163661] John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD): In England in 2006, 4,160 children under five were taken into care and more than 60 per cent. of them—2,490—were adopted. However, in Scotland 574 left care and 373, roughly 64 per cent., went home to their parents. Can the Prime Minister explain why in England children under five who leave care get adopted, while in Scotland they go home to their parents?
The Prime Minister: Social work legislation in the two countries is, of course, different. I shall look at the figures that the hon. Gentleman has put before me. But as is known, we have made strenuous efforts to try to ensure that children in difficulty are given the proper upbringing, whether that is by returning to their parents or, where it is essential, by being fostered or adopted. I will continue to look at the matter, but the hon. Gentleman has to understand that social work practice in the two countries is different.

This does go to the nub of the issue. What is so different between parents in England and parents in Scotland that means that it is "essential" for under 5s to get adopted in England, but they can go home to their parents in Scotland?

Early Day Motions

EDMs are motions in parliament. Normally they don't get debated. However, they are a sort of petition signed only by Members of Parliament. You can ask your MP to sign an EDM. You need to say which number EDM it is. MPs who are members of the government cannot sign EDMs, but you can ask them to write a letter to the minister in support of the EDM.

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMByMember.aspx?MID=4735&SESSION=891

EDM 124

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34214&SESSION=891

That this House notes that local authorities and their staff are incentivised to ensure that children are adopted; is concerned about increasing numbers of babies being taken into care, not for the safety of the infant, but because they are easy to get adopted; and calls urgently for effective scrutiny of care proceedings to stop this from happening.

EDM125

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34215&SESSION=891

That this House believes that mothers should be encouraged to breastfeed as this is in the interests of the long-term health of babies; recognises that for newborn babies this means breastfeeding on demand; further believes that newborn babies in care should also be breastfed on demand where this does not result in any risk to the baby; and calls for the Government to introduce guidelines to ensure that facilities are provided to ensure that newborn babies can be breastfed on demand.

EDM 126

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34216&SESSION=891

That this House notes the comments of a senior social worker that meetings have been held during which solicitors acting for parents have discussed how to undermine the cases of their clients; further notes that there are many odd cases in which solicitors fail to oppose care proceedings or accept that the section 31 threshold has been met notwithstanding the opposition of their clients; recognises that reporting and obtaining the investigation of such behaviour outwith parliamentary proceedings remains a contempt of court for hon. Members; and asks the Solicitors Regulatory Authority to review the implementation of the new solicitors' code of conduct and how this relates to conflicts of interest in the Family Court.

EDM127

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34217&SESSION=891

That this House regrets the Government's proposals to retain secrecy within the family courts; believes that this secrecy permeates bad practice throughout the whole system of children services; feels that it is possible to protect the identity of the child while allowing parents to talk and seek advice publicly about their treatment in the family courts, and that professional witnesses should be uniquely identified to monitor consistency; further believes that every case should have an anonymised judgement handed to the parents that they can discuss publicly; and calls on the Government to recognise that there are very serious problems in the system that have been postponed rather than resolved by the limited proposals contained within the consultation document.

EDM128