We must reform Family Courts and Family Law

SUNDAY TIMES  JULY 6 2003                                                                                      Secret courts that steal our children

BY: Stuart Wavell Kafkaesque children’s courts sitting in private are playing God with the families that come before them, writes Stuart Wavell. They sound like a chilling legacy from the bad old days of the Soviet Union — secret courts that have taken thousands of children from their families and put them into foster homes or farmed them out for adoption. There can be no appeal nor legal redress for most traumatised families. Lone judges, sitting without a jury, sever loved ones from each other on the word of omniscient medical “experts”. Any parent foolhardy enough to protest to the press risks dire penalties. http://www.msbp.com/secretcourts.htm

 

Family Court Judges who order forced adoptions are themselves criminals  who should ALL GO TO PRISON for a very long time !!

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=466970&in_page_id=1770

Social Workers and others from the family and adoption authorities  etc rarely debate the merits or otherwise of the family courts,the social services and adoptions without parental consent . When on those rare occasions they do comment, they always decry their critics as irresponsible,dangerous,and guilty of slandering devoted public servants.They NEVER answer the points made in the argument! I therefore invite someone from social services,the courts,or from government, to comment on the following:-

1:- Parents whose children have been taken are "gagged" from protesting publicly and cannot reveal any details of what they might regard as unfair treatment in the family court.The fundamental right to protest against a perceived injustice is thus completely undermined

2:-Children are often removed because some "professional" decides that they are "at risk".Parents therefore lose their children not for anything they have done but for something someone else thinks they might do at some time in the future! !Who can defend themselves against a mere prophecy that labels them guilty until proved innocent?

3:-Adoption targets do exist and several are published by local authorities on the internet showing the financial rewards for achieving them.(often millions of pounds).Fosterers are often paid £400/£500 p)er week per child,and "special schools charge as much as £6000 per week per child (10 times the fees for Princes William and Harry at Eton!).Adoption agencies (often owned by social workers or ex workers) charge around £18,000 per placement,Experts charge £3000/£4000 for a report on a parent,and lawyers fees + court charges can range from £30,000 to as much as £500,000 depending on the length of the case ! Every body "cashes in " except for the parents and their children !

4:-Family Court judges nearly always "play it safe" and "go along with social services" treating them like police in the sense that when a parent's evidence conflicts with that of a social worker the latter is nearly always believed.A jury would never take a child for adoption for "risk of emotional abuse" ,"failing to appreciate a child's emotional needs,"or "unable to protect a child from witnessing domestic (often only verbal) violence";Even more certainly a jury would never take a newborn baby for adoption merely because there were unproved suspicions of violence in the father's past,or because another child or newborn baby had previously been taken in completely different circumstances and maybe with a different partner/father.If a burglar facing a possible 6 months jail sentence has the legal right to demand a jury so should parents facing a "life sentence"  when they lose their children to adoption by anonymous strangers!

5:-At "contact sessions" parents are in most cases forbidden to mention court proceedings or even that they long for their children's return.Telephone conversations are usually similarly restricted and even  forbidden altogether leaving vulnerable children to wonder why their parents do not want them back.The cancelling or reducing of contact sessions is often used as a "weapon" to threaten parents who do not cooperate or who too actively oppose the care plans of the local authority.All this smacks of George Orwell's worst nightmares!

6:- Too often innocent parents who do not confess their supposed errors and repent are labelled non cooperative and "in denial".If mothers are upset when their babies are "confiscated they are "over emotional";If parents are hostile to social workers who take their children they need "anger management courses "and must suffer from" personality disorders" ,and if they dare to criticise the powerful forces leagued against them they are labelled "paranoiac"!

Maybe some "establishment figure" could comment on these points instead of just deploring critics and calling them ill informed and dangerous !

 

 

The Times - March 29, 2007 - by Camilla Cavendish -The forces of secrecy are prevailing - Last week a High Court judge denounced the “nightmare” suffered by a couple who were wrongly accused of harming their baby son. Read Article...

 

Time and again we hear about the merits of either admitting or excluding the media from proceedings in the family courts.This is in practical terms irrelevant as journaists would seldom bother to sit through days of tedious hearings even if they could!The important reform needed is to end the gagging of parents and other parties to the case and to allow them the very fundamental right to protest against injustices.

 

In 2006 statistics from the newly formed "department for children,schools, and families show that 4160 children "under 5 " were taken into care and 2490 of these were rushed into adoption! The financial rewards given by central government to local authorities under public service agreements for those who meet or exceed their "adoption targets" has caused an unprecedented stampede to adoption.It has also caused misery to thousands of loving parents who will never see their children again and who face jail if they reveal details of their ordeal to the public !

 

 

 

 

There has been no case on record of a parent succeeding in court in retrieving children against opposition from social services and subsequently killing or severely harming them. If any such case had existed it would have been in the criminal court,well publicised in the press,and widely quoted as a warning by social services. The only case frequently quoted by social workers to justify removing children they consider "at risk" is that of Victoria Climbé who was in fact in care and killed by her "carers" not her parents!There have however been literally thousands of cases of children put into care despite opposition from parents who have subsequently been sexually abused, physically damaged,or even killed when in "care"

 

South Wales Echo October 02 2006 - Scandal of children's homes abuse payouts - More than 160 adults who claim they were abused in a sex scandal that rocked children's homes in South Wales have been paid a total of £3m in compensation. Read article...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surely this shows where the real "risk" lies ?!

 

Daily Mail September 18 2006 - 60,000 children in care 'betrayed' as three out of four fail at school - The shameful betrayal of more than 60,000 children caught in the state care system is exposed today in a damning new report. Read article...

 

BBC News August 23 2006 - System 'failing children in care' - Children in care are written off by the education system, with nearly eight out of 10 gaining no examination qualifications whatever, children's charity Barnardo's says. Read article...

By James  

Lose your children for being too poor By James Chapman – Political Correspondent

  Daily Mail  22 August 2005

bulletin 06 03 final [pdf]

Statistics of Education: Children Looked After in England: 2002? 2003 Bulletin Issue No 06/03 November 20032 © Crown copyright 2003 Published with the permission ... see page 9.

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SBU/b000424/bulletin_06_03_final.pdf

	More than 75% of care leavers have no academic qualifications of any kind
	More than 50% of young people leaving care after 16 years are unemployed
	17% of young women leaving care are pregnant or already mothers
	10% of 16-17 year old claimants of DSS severe hardship payments have been in care
	23% of adult prisoners and 38% of young prisoners have been in care
	30% of young single homeless people have been in care

Above source: The Children Leaving Care Bill [HL] Bill 134 1999-2000  PDF Document

 

 

One third of the prison population were brought up "in care ". Worse still children forcibly removed from their mothers and brought up in care often fall pregnant at a very early age. When this happens they run a very real risk of having not just the first baby but every new baby removed at birth for adoption each time they too in their turn become mothers.

 All the above surely makes a case for at least a presumption that any parent willing to spend day after day in various intimidating courts, begging for the return of their children should be granted their wish unless overwhelming evidence is produced to show why this should not be so.

Parents or carers who brutally mistreat children do not go to court to fight for their return ,so those who do go should if possible be given the benefit of any doubt rather than the contrary as now is the case.

 

A malevolent judge threatened to send a mother and father TO PRISON if they went to the press or did anything that could betray the identity of their baby stolen at birth by social workers because they did not like her father!

HYPOCRITICAL SOCIAL WORKERS THEN ADVERTISED in the Daily Mirror to millions of readers offering no less than 10 unfortunate little victims FOR ADOPTION BY STRANGERS rather like pedigree dogs !!

 Note the "whites only" racial discrimination of thse hypocrites !! 

 

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

House of Lords - Down Lisburn Health and Social Services Trust .

Baroness Hale of Richmond.Judgement 

  34.  There is, so far as the parties to this case are aware, no European jurisprudence questioning the principle of freeing for adoption, or indeed compulsory adoption generally. The United Kingdom is unusual amongst members of the Council of Europe in permitting the total severance of family ties without parental consent. (Professor Triseliotis thought that only Portugal and perhaps one other European country allowed this.) It is, of course, the most draconian interference with family life possible.          

 

Social workers in "child protection" are now reviled throughout the land as "childsnatchers" TAKING CHILDREN FROM PARENTS WHO HAVE NOT BEEN ACCUSED OR CONVICTED OF ANY CRIME WHATSOEVER ! Instead of "helpers" they are known as bullies who intimidate single mothers and whose main intent is meeting "adoption targets" not keeping families together . For ths image to change vital reforms are needed.......;

 

1:-Abolish the family court secrecy that gags parents who wish to complain.
2:-Abolish "emotional harm" and "risk" as justifications for putting children into care 
3:-Abolish "forced adoption"if a parent opposes an adoption in court
4:-Abolish decisions by family court judges to take babies and young children into care.(let juries decide) 
5:-Abolish the power of social services to regulate and control contact between parents and children , to censor their conversation or to restrict phone calls.The court must control the frequency of contacts.  
6:-Abolish the restriction preventing a lay advisor from presenting a case for parents refused legal aid
7:-Abolish hearsay evidence in family courts and require witnesses to stick to facts without "speculation."
8:-Abolish the removal of children for non life threatening forms of neglect such as absences from school or insanitary dwellings unless a written warning  has been served and the situation has not been remedied.

 

These reforms would stop most of the present injustices.

 

Read more detailed reforms below together with the reasons for them and the proofs that they are necessary.

              

REFORMS

 

1. SECRECY
More than 200 MPs have called for the abolition of all secrecy in family courts;
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29194&SESSION=875 . There should be no gagging orders on parents who should be free like rape victims to waive anonymity and go to the press with their history, their identities, and their complaints (including details of the court proceedings, the witnesses who testified, and the judgement) if they believe their children have been unjustly taken. These children are routinely advertised for adoption like pedigree dogs by social services in magazines "Adoption UK" etc., on the internet www.ukkids.info etc,and even in the Daily Mirror! All with full colour photos, first names and birth dates, allowing easy identification by the neighbours! The secrecy exists to gag protesting parents not to protect the identity of the children and should be scrapped! Also abolition of "jail with no public hearing" (a parliamentary question revealed that more than 200 persons were sent to prison in secret last year by family courts!).

2. HARM & RISK
The notion of "emotional harm" is a vague concept impossible to either prove or disprove and should be scrapped. Most important of all however is "RISK". Parents and children are split up, and in effect punished not because of anything they have done but only for what the “professionals” think someone might do! Perfectly happy and healthy children are declared to be at risk of harm at some time in the future by social workers and hired "experts" (psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists and the like!) who base their opinions very largely on the reports from social workers which are always so thoughtfully provided for them!Any experts that are consulted should start "with a clean sheet" unbiased by reports favourable or otherwise from social workers, expert "colleagues",or other outside sources. Parents are asked how they can possibly know better than these highly qualified (and very highly paid!) professionals! In fact the answer is both simple and financial. In the Louise Woodward case for example, top experts disagreed about a possibly shaken baby but each expert gave evidence for the side that paid them!! Some supposedly “top experts” like Professor Meadows, Professor Southall and Dr Marietta Higgs, caused literally hundreds of children to be legally kidnapped on evidence based on their crackpot theories that have now been thoroughly discredited! In any case, the experts hired by social services always tend to take the side of their social service or family court paymasters so children and worse still, newborn babies, are then sent for adoption. This is said to avoid any more risk from parents who are naturally angry and upset that their children have been removed and who can then be declared to be emotionally unstable. A result as unjust as it is absurd! Would any genuinely loving mother be able to remain calm and cooperative with those who had taken her children or worse still, her newborn baby? On the continent in France, Spain, Italy etc. children are only taken from parents if they have suffered severe physical harm. The concepts of "emotional harm" and "future risk" quite rightly do not exist there! Children from these countries are only taken if a parent has committed or at least been charged with a CRIME against their child. "NO CRIME NO CARE ORDER" should be the rule also in the UK. The simple fact that "other children from the same mother have previously been taken into care" should no longer be considered an adequate reason for removing children, and ESPECIALLY NEW BORN BABIES from parents. Circumstances can and often do change, and it is wicked to ignore such changes. To take a baby from a mother of sound mind who has never in any way caused it harm must be a CRIME (as an article in The Times clearly states). Every completely blameless mother in the UK is now at risk of having her baby taken at birth because the father has merely been "suspected" (not charged or convicted) of some violent incident in his distant past. "
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article759348.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6297573.stm

3. JURIES
Decisions in contested cases in family courts THAT INVOLVE LONG-TERM FOSTER CARE (or forced adoption if that has not been abolished) must be decided by jury. Any burglar or other criminal facing a possible 6 months or more in prison has the right to demand a jury so why not a parent facing the loss of a child to adoption? In effect a life sentence! A jury would be less likely to "rubberstamp" demands of social services than "establishment judges", who inevitably take what they often describe as "the safe option" and agree with highly-paid experts who foretell that children are at risk of emotional harm! It is very rare that any judge will restore children or babies to parents against opposition in court from social services. THESE JUDGES ARE THE REAL VILLAINS AS THEIR JUSTICE SHOULD PROTECT THE WEAK NOT OPPRESS THEM. I believe (like The Times article) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article759348.ece that these establishment judges commit a wicked crime every time they condone the taking of newborn babies from sane mothers that have never caused their babies harm. At Nuremburg after World War II the Nazi judges were condemned to prison as criminals and many of our family court judges deserve the same fate. Most of the decisions that now divide children from loving parents would be decided quite differently by a jury! This would soon reduce the number of cases brought by social services before the courts!

4. CONTACT
Telephone contact must never be forbidden between parents and children. Letters and conversation between parents and children must NEVER be censored or restricted by the social service "thought police". Frequency of contact visits between parents and children in care should be decided specifically by a court and NOT left to the discretion of social services who sometimes use their discretion as a weapon to subdue "difficult" parents.

5. NEGLECT
Parents accused of neglect that has not endangered the life of the child (absences from school, dirty or cluttered house etc.) should be given a written warning to put matters right, and a chance to do so before children can be taken.

6. ADOPTION
The Government’s own research in 2001 already showed “concern that the needs of the children were being overlooked because of the struggle to meet adoption targets” http://www.local.dtlr.gov.uk/research/beacyr3/adoption/07.htm . Our top priority should be the abolition of forced adoption, i.e. when a parent who has not been convicted of any crime that might affect the child opposes adoption in the family court. Also, all adopted children should retain their original birth certificate so they know who their birth parents are ! It is a wicked deed when  the State conspires to conceal from adopted children the identity of their own parents by faking a new but false certificate of birth! 
Adoption targets and large government rewards for achieving those targets (under public service agreements) should be scrapped. Kent got £21million(!), fosterers get as much as £400 per child per week, Special Schools up to £7000/week per child, adoption agencies around £18000/placement, lawyers as much as £50,000 per case, "experts” up to £4000 for a 3-hour interview with a parent. Without these rewards, social workers and others might be more motivated to keeping families together instead of splitting them up! Over 60,000 children are in care and more than 3000/year are adopted, of which over 700/year are taken after hearings contested by distraught parents who nearly always lose! These figures are extremely disturbing. 20 MPs from all parties have signed early day motion 626 deploring the way social workers take babies and young children into care NOT for the benefit of the child but to meet the adoption targets set by the Government.
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=32301&SESSION=885

7. WITNESSES
So-called "experts" and "professionals" should no longer be allowed to make "prophecies" and "risk assessments" in court ,or "play detective "guessing who was responsible for injuries, but should confine themselves to the facts and to the present.  It is incredible that in the UK families are ruthlessly split up NOT for events that have happened but for events that so called "experts" think one day might happen! As already stated the Louise Woodward case demonstrated the fallibility of "professionals" when the most distinguished experts in the country disagreed about a "shaken baby" case.  "Experts” that are selected by social services or by "the court" unsurprisingly almost always end up by deciding that the hapless parents are "in denial" suffer from "paranoia" or have a "personality disorder" simply because like many journalists, from The Times, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail, broadcasters of programmes like “The Real Story” and thousands of other people, they see social workers as "childsnatchers" rather than kindly helpers devoted to the public good! Parents are rarely allowed by their lawyers to call their own "experts" and if they represent themselves they cannot afford to.Parents who risk losing their children to adoption on the word of a medical expert should ALWAYS have the right to a second opinion by an expert of their own choice Most legal aid lawyers are widely known as "professional losers" because they collect large fees for simply advising parents to give up the fight. They almost never win cases in the civil family courts as they rarely call all the witnesses and often forbid parents to say anything in court at all!! Parents should be able to testify and to call their children, their family doctor, and other family members as witnesses. According to the UN convention on children's rights, to which the UK subscribes, children capable of understanding the nature of a court have the right to testify in proceedings that involve them, and the right to an undisturbed family life including contact with their siblings .These rights are normally completely disregarded by the secret UK family courts. Both parent's human rights and their children's rights should be respected at all times. Hearsay and recorded or video material should no longer be allowed as evidence in family courts.

8. EMERGENCY PROTECTION ORDERS
These must be abolished as parents have no opportunity to oppose them or defend themselves. The police have authority (police protection) to remove children they believe to be in danger and they alone should decide if any immediate danger really exists.

9. ADVISOR
A McKenzie friend (parent's lay advisor) should be allowed to present the parent's case and cross-examine witnesses. This clause is doubly important when parents have been refused or are not eligible for legal aid. Such a person would usually stand a better chance of winning a case for parents than most of “the legal aid lawyers” (PROFESSIONAL LOSERS) who collect huge fees for advising hapless parents not to fight social services but to go along with everything they say. Parents have no need for lawyers to do that, but how those legal sharks must laugh as they cash in! Parents who represent themselves and who wish to appeal should be supplied by the court with a copy of the judgement within 7 days so that they can put the appeal into court before expiration of the time limit.

10. ACCESS
A parent who loses custody of children to an ex-wife, ex-husband, or ex-partner should have an enforceable right to such contact as the court awards. If such contact is denied or persistently prevented by one parent the court should warn the offending parent that if there is any more refusal to obey a court order for contact then the court will transfer custody to the parent that has been deprived.