17-Jul-2010 TELEGRAPH - BOOKER - BRING FAMILY LAW TO BOOK

17-Jul-2010 TELEGRAPH - BOOKER - BRING FAMILY LAW TO BOOK

Hi,

another excellent article by our old friend Christopher Booker as ever liasing with our good friend Dr. Richard North.
You will remember the articles about http://stolenkids-sads.blogspot.com/ and the help we had from John Hemmings MP & Charles Hendry MP eventually having questions asked in The House of Commons at PMQs.

We all owe Booker & The Sunday Telegraph our thanks for their help.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you believe we can help you get publicity and Justice for YOUR story but we MUST have sound provenance.

Regards,
Greg_L-W.

It's time to bring family law to book

Families are being torn apart by a system veiled in secrecy,
says Christopher Booker


By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:39PM BST 17 Jul 2010

Mother and child are often torn apart by our system of forced adoption Photo: Alamy

I have never, in all my years as a journalist, felt so frustrated as I do over two deeply disturbing stories of apparent injustice that cry out to be reported but which, for legal reasons, I can refer to only in the vaguest terms. To cover them as they deserve, and as the victims so desperately wish, would challenge a part of our legal system shrouded in an almost impenetrable veil of secrecy.


Two weeks ago I recounted four examples of what I described as one of the greatest scandals in Britain today – the seizing of children by social workers from loving families, on what appears to be the flimsiest and most questionable grounds. The children may then be handed on to foster carers, who can receive up to £400 a week for each child, or are put out for adoption, in a way which too often leads to intense distress for both the parents and the children involved.


One case I referred to concerns a north London couple whose five children were seized in April by social workers from Haringey council and sent into foster care. The mother was then pregnant, and her baby was born last month. Shortly afterwards, according to her account, nine police officers and social workers burst into her hospital room at 3am and, as she lay breastfeeding, wrested her baby from her arms with considerable force. Discovering they had nowhere to put the baby, the authorities took it to another part of the hospital, where the mother was escorted four times a day to feed her child, until she was discharged four days later.


Having talked at length to the mother, I found this story so shocking that I put a series of questions to the council, to get their side of the story. The response of Haringey (which, since the national furore over its failure to prevent the battering to death of Baby P, has been somewhat sensitive on these issues) was to ask the High Court to rule that I should not be allowed to write about the case at all. In the end, the court did not go that far, but The Sunday Telegraph was reminded of the comprehensive restrictions on reporting such stories.


After spending several hours with the parents, looking at their neat home, the little beds where their children used to sleep and the cot prepared for the baby, I came away more convinced than ever that something was seriously amiss. I found the wife impressive in her detailed account of the events, clearly a devoted mother who feels herself and her children to have been the victims of an extraordinary error – the nature of which, alas, I cannot reveal.


This week, two days have been set aside for the mother to put her case to a judge. Despite the tragedy that has torn their family apart, the parents have never previously had an opportunity to challenge Haringey council's version of the story. I only hope the court takes particular care to check out the evidence put before it, and that in due course I can fully report a case that sheds a revealing light on a system supposedly devised to protect the interests of the children but which too often seems to result in the very opposite.


Also this week, the fate of another family hangs on another court hearing. This is the story of a couple who last January were rejoicing at the birth of their first child. Some weeks later, concerned that the baby's arm seemed floppy, they took it back to the hospital to seek medical advice. An X-ray confirmed a minor fracture. This proved to be the start of a nightmare, which led to them being arrested, handcuffed and driven off separately to a police station, where the mother was held for nine hours without food. The father was imprisoned overnight.


It emerged that the doctor they saw had reported her suspicion about the child's fracture to Coventry social workers. The couple were put on police bail, ordering them to surrender their passports, forbidding them to be unsupervised in the presence of anyone under 16, and only allowing them to sleep in one of two named houses (the other being the father's family home). But because no charges had been brought, the social workers allowed the baby into the care of its Irish grandmother, a respected primary school headmistress. To avoid the baby being seized, she took it to her family home in Dublin, where it has been supported by a band of relatives.


Determined not to be thwarted, Coventry's social workers then asked the Irish courts to rule – in a case to be heard this week – that the baby must be sent back to them in England. The hospital doctor has meanwhile contacted the Irish medical authorities demanding that in no way must they carry out specific medical tests on the baby which might account for its injury.


On Thursday I spoke again with the mother, who reported that her own bail had been lifted. She was therefore about to join her baby in Ireland. But the child's father has been told that he may face charges for harming his son, a possibility they find incredible. This will be reported to the Irish court, prompting the fear that the child may be taken from his mother and grandmother, neither of them under any suspicion, and deported to England to be placed in foster care.


In the House of Commons last week I met the one politician who has done more than any other – as this kind of story grows disturbingly frequent – to expose what is going on. John Hemming, the Lib Dem MP for Yardley, Birmingham, not only set up the Justice for Families website, which contains details of many similar cases, but recently assembled an official all-party group of concerned MPs to campaign for the radical overhaul of a system which seems so horribly off the rails, and too often to be betraying the very principles it was intended to uphold.


Not the least startling feature of this system is the secrecy with which it has managed to hide away from the world almost all it gets up to. As is confirmed by Ian Josephs, a remarkable businessman who runs the Forced Adoption website and has helped hundreds of families in similar plight, one of its most glaring flaws is the extent to which aggrieved parents are deprived of any right to put their case, not just to the courts but to anyone who might be able to help them.


It is a system hermetically sealed off, in which the fate of parents and children can be decided by an incestuously closed community of social workers, police, lawyers, doctors and other professional "experts", who all too often seem to work together in an alliance which is ruthlessly oblivious to the interests of the families who fall into its clutches. Again and again I have heard of the misery of children torn from their distraught parents, forced to live unhappily in the hands of inadequate foster carers, and whose only wish is to be returned to those they know and love.


The more I learn about this scandal, the more I understand why, in April, an Appeal Court judge, Lord Aikens, savaged the actions of Devon county council social workers in a forced adoption case as having been "more like Stalin's Russia or Mao's China than the west of England". The council's lawyers were told to read a judgment by Lord Justice Wall, now head of the High Court's Family Division, which condemned Greenwich social workers as "enthusiastic removers of children".


It is high time the veils of secrecy were ripped from this national outrage; that politicians intervened to call the system to order; and that the press was free to bring properly to light family tragedies such as those I have only been allowed to hint at above.


To view the original article CLICK HERE

'Open the curtains, throw open the windows and permit the light of investigation and fresh air into family courts and sexual, emotional and physical abuse of the vulnerable - expose the abuse & the abuse of authority of those acting in OUR name!

No child asked to be or enjoys abuse, it is for the gratification of the inadequate'.
To understand the Concept & Services of
StolenKids- where you can help yourself and others at:
StolenKids- GO TO http://StolenKids-Bloggers.blogspot.com/
Or perhaps more suited to YOUR needs:
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 To See The Links Page
CLICK HERE

16-Jul-2010 - Father wrongly accused - The SCOTSMAN - John FORSYTH

16-Jul-2010 - Father wrongly accused - The SCOTSMAN - John FORSYTH

Father wrongly accused in flawed abuse inquiry

Published Date: 16 July 2010
By John Forsyth

THE handling of child abuse investigations in Scotland has been thrown into question after a sheriff found the methods used by police and social workers while interviewing a young girl were so flawed that he recommended they be retrained.

• The little girl was at the centre of an access battle between her estranged parents. Picture, posed by model: Complimentary

In a devastating court judgment - which experts said highlighted "serious systemic problems" of malpractice throughout the child protection service - their conduct was described as worse than in the interviewing of children that led to the Orkney child abuse inquiry in 1991.

The country's leading expert on the forensic interviewing of children said the case exposed a problem at the heart of child protection that was harming youngsters' welfare.

A senior insider at the Faculty of Advocates warned that the elements of the case were "not untypical" and said there was disquiet among lawyers about the consequences of inadequate or poorly understood training in civil and criminal cases.

Related articles

• Coaching by social workers at centre of Orkney scandal

• Anne Houston: Listening openly and expertly is the key to abuse cases

• Echo of Orkney scandal makes this child abuse case of concern

The sheriff's ruling concerned a child custody case in which a man had been denied unsupervised access to his daughter after his wife made claims he had touched their child intimately.

The ruling, which dismissed the abuse claims outright, found a senior social worker and police officers attempted to coerce the five-year-old girl into repeating allegations that she had been sexually abused before subjecting her to an "unjustified" invasive and intimate medical examination.

The court found there was a catalogue of inappropriate direct questioning, including leading and closed questions.

According to the judgment, the interviews broke almost all the rules set out in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Protocol which is regarded as the gold standard of interviewing children.

Sheriff Neil Morrison called for the removal of the social worker, Tracey Black, and two police officers, Detective Constable Colin Johnston and PC Susan Purnell, from child interviewing duties after he ruled their work was "damaging".

The Edinburgh sheriff also recommended that Ms Black, the senior social worker from the city council's child protection team, be relieved of all child protection duties until she had been retrained, after he found she had asked inappropriate and leading questions during the alleged child abuse case and put forward records of interviews he considered to be "disingenuous".
In an article published in the Scots Law Times today, Dr David La Rooy of Abertay University and advocate John Halley said they wished to "highlight a serious systemic problem which is harming the welfare of children".

They wrote: "The failures in this case are not dissimilar to the kinds of malpractice (we] regularly encounter in our respective practices in other cases of joint investigative interviewing of children in Scotland."

The senior advocate said: "There is a problem that the social worker allocated to a case controls the narrative and I see frequently in child contact cases and child referrals, that they find themselves seeking to prove an allegation - often in a haphazard way - and that isn't in the interests of justice or of the child."

Yesterday, Lothian and Borders Police confirmed it had acted on the report by the sheriff, relieving the officers of child interviewing duties and committing itself to implementing "all necessary improvements" in this area.

But Edinburgh City Council insisted, despite having removed Ms Black from the case in question, it retained full confidence in the social worker and she remained on child protection duty.

A council spokesman said: "We are satisfied that our social worker was acting in the best interests of the child and they continue to work in child protection. We have made some changes to the worker's responsibilities as the fact that there was a court case makes it difficult for her to continue with this particular family."

The concerns arose during an application by the father for contact with his two children. The application had been resisted by his estranged partner who left their home in 2008 with the children after making an allegation that he had sexually abused their daughter.

A full investigation, including joint interviews with police and social workers, led to an intimate examination of the girl, a move the child psychologist said was "unjustified"; had been a "significant event" for a girl of that age; and one she was uncomfortable with.

The picture was complicated by the discovery of e-mail correspondence between the mother and a lawyer who advised her of "dirty tricks" that she might use to secure residence with the children and cut off contact with the father completely.

Sheriff Morrison ruled there was no evidence any such abuse had taken place and the daughter had repeatedly indicated that the alleged abuse had not happened. He allowed unsupervised contact with the father and urged the parents to work out arrangements for themselves. He also ruled there was no case for the daughter or her brother to be on the at-risk register.

The judge listed problems with the way the two interviews were conducted, led by a senior social worker but with a police officer present.

He described the second interview as "one of the worst I have seen".

He continued: "Dr R (a child psychologist] considered the interviewing of (the girl] to be worse that the interviewing of children that led to the Orkney inquiry because here it
ADVERTISEMENT was so deliberate.

It alarmed them that all these years later there was direct questioning of the child because she was not saying what the interviewers wanted to hear. (The witness] was concerned at the driven nature of the interviews in drawing things out of the child and putting things in the child's mind." The sheriff was shocked the interviews were not recorded but written up later based on handwritten notes.

The notes were never transcribed and the police and social work witnesses could barely read them themselves in court. In transcribing the notes, Sheriff Morrison said the social worker had been "disingenuous" in her interpretation of what the girl had said.

Furthermore, the social worker still appeared to be "tragically unaware of the dangers of mixing investigative and therapeutic or 'direct work'."

A Lothian and Borders police spokesman said the force was aware of the judgment made by Sheriff Morrison.

"In regard to the police officers present at the interview, both have been removed from the list of joint investigative interview trained officers. One officer does not wish to undertake such duties in the future, and therefore will not be redeployed or retrained.

"The other officer is waiting to be retrained and will not be deployed until retraining has taken place."

A Scottish Government spokesman said it had been working with partners to update best practice guidance on interviewing child witnesses which included encouraging the use of visual recording of interviews.

Few areas of the law require greater sensitivity in their handling than allegations of child sex abuse. Such cases, badly handled, can be devastating. Scotland has a blemished record in this area. Do we have a serious systemic problem?

Every suspicion taken seriously

LOCAL authorities have an obligation to protect children under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.

If a child-protection referral is received by a "core agency" - social services, health bodies or police - a child-protection case conference may then be held.

If the child is found to be at risk, their name will be placed on the Child Protection Register.

A referral must contain details of why concerns have been raised, with procedures dictating that anyone with suspicions must establish some basic facts, without using leading questions such as "Did he..?" or "Did she..?".

Information must be included on the imminent risk to the child and if there is a suspicion that other children may be at risk. The agencies have a duty to treat every referral seriously.

The leading questions

THESE are some of the questions the child was asked:

"Is the place the doctor looked at where your dad tickles you?"

One of the police officers involved admitted this could be a leading question. The child psychologist said it was "extremely leading" and the judge said it should never have been asked.

"You've got a really good memory. Shall we have one more go at remembering what you told mummy? I can take you home so that you can play with Play Doh if you can remember."

One child psychologist described this question as a bribe, and another said it encouraged the girl to remember what she had told her mother - and not necessarily the truth.

"It would be really helpful if you could remember."

Said to the girl after she said she could not remember. A child psychologist said this told the child that what she had said was not good enough and put pressure on the youngster to say what the adults wanted.

"Is anything happening that makes you a bit sore or sad?"

This was criticised by the child psychologist for introducing something that the child had not said. The girl had given no indication she was sore or sad.

Other deficiencies highlighted included:

• The interviewers did not have all the relevant information to hand when they conducted the first interview.

• The official records of the interviews were found to be disingenuous.

• There was no closure phase to the interview, contravening Scottish Government guidance that is intended to stop children feeling like they have not failed or disappointed the interviewers. Cross-examination of the social worker revealed she did not believe this was an essential part of the interview. Later, she claimed there had been a closure phase but it was not recorded.

To view the original article CLICK HERE

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where you can help yourself and others at:

StolenKids-

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01-Jul-2010 - YOU ARE YOUR BEST PROTECTION! Gareth HULME Sentenced

01-Jul-2010 - YOU ARE YOUR BEST PROTECTION! Gareth HULME Sentenced





Ringleader of international paedophile gang could spend life behind bars

By Jaya Narain
Last updated at 7:58 AM on 1st July 2010
Add to My Stories Gareth Hulme, 25, was the lynchpin of a sex abuse network that targeted young children across three countries
The ringleader of an international paedophile gang who was branded 'every parent's nightmare' could spend his life behind bars.


Gareth Hulme, 25, was the lynchpin of a sex abuse network that targeted young children across four countries.


He twice raped a young schoolboy and posted a series of online messages arranging the sexual abuse of other children.


The security guard was eventually apprehended after he boasted about raping a nine-year-old boy on an internet chatroom.


His arrest sparked a string of police raids on homes across Europe leading to the arrest of 25 suspected paedophiles.


More than 20 police forces were called in, including Interpol, to crack down on the child sex ring in Spain, Luxembourg and Ireland.


Last night Hulme was beginning an indeterminate sentence after a judge told him he would remain a danger to young boys for many years to come.


Judge Anthony Gee QC said: 'No right-thinking person hearing the facts of this case can feel anything but horror, revulsion and disgust.


He told Hulme: 'I regard yours as an appalling case. You are a sexual predator and a paedophile. I regard you as a real danger to young boys who you regard as your prey to satisfy deviant and perverted sexual urges.'


Referring to a comment made by Hulme about sex with children where he said 'nine is the youngest that I'd go', Judge Gee said: 'Those views will shock every parent and represents every parent's nightmare.'


The judge said: 'It will be a matter for the authorities to decide when you no longer pose a threat to young boys. It may be in many years to come and may be never.'


Manchester Crown Court heard Hulme would use the MSN chatrooms to exchange encrypted messages with like-minded abusers telling them he enjoyed 'raping young lads' and causing them pain.
On a website for gay youths, the former bouncer groomed a 15-year-old boy and the pair eventually met up and had sex.


The following month, he attempted to arrange to have sex with a child after a man sent him a message claiming to have a cousin they could abuse.


Police were tipped off and Hulme was arrested though police found his claims to have raped a nine-year-old were pure fantasy.


Hulme lured a 10-year-old boy away from his parents at a festival in Cheshire.


He raped the young boy twice on consecutive days, took photos of the rape with his mobile phone and then later told his security firm boss: 'I don't know why I did it.'


Police traced the 10-year-old boy who initially denied anything had happened but later admitted that he had been raped.


In an impact statement his parents said: 'There is not a day that goes by that we do not have to think about what happened. We do not know if our son will ever be the same again.'


Police decoded encrypted messages on Hulme's computer and found images of child abuse and video clips which had been sent to other men.


Alaric Bassano, prosecuting, said: 'Amongst the offences discussed and apparently contemplated by Hulme are the force rape of children, sexual activity with boys under 10, gaining access to children to abuse by baby sitting, sharing children to abuse and raping the children of friends and family.'


Last night Hulme from Gorton , Manchester was given an indeterminate sentence for the protection of the public after admitting 24 child sex offences.


They included two rapes of a boy, grooming a child for sexual activity and the making and distribution of graphic video clips of child sex abuse.


Judge Gee QC told Hulme he must serve a minimum of six years before he is eligible for parole but may never be released from prison.


Detective Constable Jordan McGowan of Greater Manchester Police said: 'We are satisfied that Hulme was the ringleader of a loose network of paedophiles who were in contact with each other via encrypted messages on internet chat logs.


'He took people who were thinking that way just that one step further. He is certainly the most dangerous man involved in the network.'


So far three other men, including a former high school maths teacher, have been charged with child sex offences in connection and the investigation continues.

Read more: CLICK HERE

'Open the curtains, throw open the windows and permit the light of investigation and fresh air into family courts and sexual, emotional and physical abuse of the vulnerable - expose the abuse & the abuse of authority of those acting in OUR name! No child asked to be or enjoys abuse, it is for the gratification of the inadequate'.

To understand the Concept & Services of Stolen????-

where you can help yourself and others: StolenKids-

4 Those losing kids due to 'authorities' ie Forced Adoption & Care!

GO TO http://stolenkids-bloggers.blogspot.com/

Or perhaps more suited to YOUR needs: StolenChildhood- 

4 those facing abuse past or present sexual or other!

GO TO http://stolenchildhood-bloggers.blogspot.com/

or StolenTrust-

4 those where or have suffered abuse within a relationship!

GO TO http://StolenTrust-bloggers.blogspot.com/

or StolenOyster-

4 those who have been abused or raped by a stranger or stalker

GO TO http://StolenOyster-bloggers.blogspot.com/

To See The Links Page

CLICK HERE

Related articles

• Paedophile ex-Pc jailed for life (bbc.co.uk)
• Paedophile ring leader Colin Blanchard jailed indefinitely (dailymail.co.uk)
• Paedophile warned he may never be freed (independent.co.uk)
• Paedophile ring 'groomed young girls before abusing them in empty cottage' (dailymail.co.uk)
• Colin Blanchard jailed indefinitely for leading four women into 'sickening' paedophile ring (menmedia.co.uk)
• Rochdale computer expert Colin Blanchard to be jailed for leading four women in 'sickening' paedophile ring (menmedia.co.uk)
• Paedophile policeman Daniel Lishman who preyed on children jailed for life (dailymail.co.uk)
• You: Colin Blanchard may never be freed (guardian.co.uk)
• Paedophile ring leader Colin Blanchard to serve minimum nine years in jail for persuading four women to abuse children (dailymail.co.uk)
• Paedophile ring abused 30 girls (bbc.co.uk)
• Wash. settles lawsuit filed by abused children (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Paedophile ring leader is jailed (bbc.co.uk)
• 'Degenerate' paedophile is jailed (bbc.co.uk)