Taking Liberties

[Forseti]

I may be placing this under the wrong heading; please feel free to move it.

I've just been reading a new book called The Gulag of the Family Courts by Jack Frost. This is about an aspect of the Family Courts which is rarely mentioned. Most of what people now know about these courts is a result of the campaign by Fathers 4 Justice and other groups to allow children equal contact with their fathers after divorce and separation (private law). The Family Courts however also deal with the smaller but highly significant number of children taken from their parents by social services and placed into care or advertised for adoption (public law).

Regularly this has nothing to do with any risk the parents may pose their children and is actually about satisfying the adoption targets the government sets councils. The bonuses available to councils which meet these targets are worth millions. According to Frost, blond, blue-eyed children are particularly at risk from forced adoption.

Frost tells the story of his own daughter, Heidi, and then a number of other stories, including the couple from Essex deemed too unintelligent to look after their own children; the council alleged that the mother took too long to clean her teeth. These are the sort of excuses social workers are forced to dream up to justify abduction.

What enables cases like this to happen, Frost maintains, is the secrecy under which the courts operate, and the complete lack of accountability or responsibility which results. Not even government Ministers are permitted to know what happens in the Gulag of the Family Courts, and parents may not discuss their cases outside, and so are denied access to sources of help and support. It is only since 2005 that they have been able to tell their MPs; Eric Pickles MP was threatened with imprisonment for taking up his constituents' case.

The family courts encourage social workers to make false allegations against parents in the same way they encourage parents to make false allegations against each other in private law. These allegations only have to be proved on the balance of probability (rather than beyond all reasonable doubt as in the criminal courts), and what is probable is decided by a single, untrained, unaccountable judge. And on this basis children are taken away from their parents for ever.

This book deserves to be read; most people are unaware that Britain operates secret courts (that's why they're secret) and are equally unaware of practices like forced adoption. Frost warns that the government is proposing to extend rather than relax the secrecy; this is true, what he doesn't say is that secret courts themselves may also be introduced in other areas of law, for example for dealing with terrorists. At present a terrorist is guaranteed a fairer trial than a parent falsely accused of child abuse.
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All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke

[Moragmac]

Any court which is unaccountable is very worrying in my view. The whole area of children at risk needs to be looked at very closely.

I will try and get the book some time. I have a queue at the moment!

Sally
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Menn tracht und Gott lacht

[doughty923]

My daughter Seren was born on the 14th November 2008, she was taken into foster care aged 2 weeks. initially we were offered help and support by social services to care for our daughter - but all they wanted was information. When my now ex-partner went into labour I (the Father) was visited in hospital by a social worker (who wanted to speak to my partner while she was giving birth) and given 48 hours to find 24 hour supervision or my then unborn daughter would have been taken straight into care.
Seren was taken into care a week later - after my partner fell apart, when told social care was an inevitability. Since then I have for the last 8 months had 4 hours of contact with Seren - 5 days a week. I have no violent convictions, I have never been accused of hurting my child or sexual abuse, I am educated to degree level, I am not suffering from a mental health problem or personality disorder - but they are still going to try and adopt my daughter.
My only hope is a residential assesment - but the LA is refusing to pay(£57,000) - I have a very slim hope that the Judge on the day in Court will order in my favour. Social Services have railroaded me to get what they wanted, distorting all the facts, quoting out of context and using any excuse to get their way. CAFCASS the so called independent aspect of the care case have proven to be little more than a rubber stamp.
All I know is I have nowhere to turn to for help, I am trapped in a terrifying process with practically no legal recourse. I am most probably going to lose my daughter, a life sentence, to the vagaries of the legal system, and to the conjecture and supposition of so-called proffesionals. If this was a criminal case, the courts would throw it out.