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Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / March 2008British justice: a family ruined
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article340 6214.ece British justice: a family ruined A chilling example of our secret State where a mother and child are forced into hiding Camilla Cavendish 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? http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2008/Februa ry/opinion_February41.xml§ion=opinion&col= How do you judge a court held in secret? BY WILLIAM REES-MOGG 11 February 2008 THERE are extreme occasions on which public law and private conscience collide. Some of them, as in the cases of Socrates or Charles I, end in martyrdom. Some lead to imprisonment, though it is a terrible thing to imprison a man for doing what he believes is his duty. Almost invariably, this collision of law and private duty tends to discredit the law and the judges concerned. No one now defends the judges of Socrates, though there are still some admirers of the English dictator Oliver Cromwell. All human sympathy flows towards the man of conscience who is inevitably seen as the victim. Law itself becomes suspect, because it leads to consequences that seem to be horribly unjust. Such a case was reported last week. A 56-year-old businessman of good character appealed against his prison sentence of 16 months for helping his wife flee British social services because she feared she would not be allowed to keep her unborn baby. The appeal was rejected by Mr Justice Bennett in the High Court. The businessman's wife had been separated from her previous husband in 2004 after a 'volatile and violent' marriage. At that time, her son from that marriage was taken into temporary care by the local authority, until she had 'sorted her life out'. After her remarriage she asked for the return of her son, but was refused by social services. A Family Court judge upheld this refusal. At some point, she was led to believe social services would take away the unborn infant. There can be no reports of such cases in the Family Courts. We know as much as we do only because the eventual appeal against sentence took the form of a criminal appeal that could be reported in the normal way. There are numerous questions to be asked. They would affect public confidence in the decisions of social services and of the Family Courts. Is it true that the original agreement was for a voluntary period in care? Did social services change this to an enforced adoption? If so, why? Did the son, now aged eight, agree with the proposed enforced adoption? As he subsequently ran away with his mother, one can assume that he was reluctant to be adopted. None of these questions can be settled because the Family Court proceedings are kept secret 'in order to protect the child'. It is questionable whether secrecy protects the child threatened with separation from his or her parents. The mother made contact with her son at school; he absconded from his foster home and met his mother and stepfather and they went to France. The husband then returned home alone and was arrested and charged with the abduction of the boy. The mother has since given birth to a premature baby. The High Court has now rejected his appeal against sentence. Mr Justice Bennett acknowledged the 'powerful emotions' involved, but seemed to regard them as a reason for severity rather than a mitigation. He observed that '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 'pressures', it may be noted, are the feelings any father might have at the enforced adoption of his stepson, and the possible seizure of his own child at birth. Mr Justice Bennett summed up the issue in these terms: 'Such proceedings, taken by a local authority, must be respected by parents.' How would any of us react if a local authority attempted to take away our children in order to hand them over for permanent 'enforced adoption'? Such a policy may be justified in some cases, but it is an outrage against any family. Most people have had their own collisions with local authorities on matters such as housing, planning or rubbish collection. Some agents of some local authorities are well-qualified, helpful people. Others, such as obstructive junior staff, are not. Some barristers do not have great confidence in the Family Courts because of the secrecy in which they operate. One hears of relaxed procedures, which afford little protection to the parents -- or, indeed, to children. One hears of a loose approach to the evidence, an undue reliance on hearsay, and an absence of any firm assumption of innocence. Secrecy breeds miscarriages of justice. Public scrutiny is the real test of the quality of justice. Almost all major miscarriages of justice in recent years have come to light only because the courts were open to the public. One cannot discover whether the Family Courts' standards are appropriate, because they are secret. Families are threatened with imprisonment if they go public in the fight against the removal of their children. That is a gross injustice. There are also questions of class and status. It sometimes happens that there are enforced adoptions in middle-class cases. But they are much rarer. Many low-income parents do not carry the social authority or self-assurance to defend their children against possibly unjust social services rulings. On average, children who have been in care are more likely to be school truants, more likely to leave school early, less likely to attend higher education, more likely to become addicted to drugs or alcohol, more likely to be abused, more likely to die young, more likely to become homeless and far more likely to be in prison. There should never be a bias in favour of compulsory care. The real issue is secrecy. Justice cannot be done behind closed doors. For most of us, the businessman who risked prison to protect his wife and children is the hero. That view may be mistaken, but secrecy means the social services, and Mr Justice Bennett, cannot justify their apparently arbitrary decision. (Lord William Rees-Mogg is a former editor of the Times. This column first appeared in the Mail on Sunday) "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." http://exile-blog.blogspot.com/2008/03/blog-exclusive-free-martin-mccabe.html The man's name is Martin McCabe, but I haven't been able to find out any more information as yet. |
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