Family Court Corruption - Chapter 6

This time there was talk of ‘failure to thrive’. Eventually with a change in feeding pattern from feed on demand as previously recommended to a feed every four hours. The baby was once again returned to the family home. The father refused to help to collect his daughter from hospital it was left to the mother to arrange transport with a friend as she does not drive. It is also noteworthy to remember that the father had already moved out of the family home. However, he was ordered by a judge to move back in to help with the child care. A few days after the return home the mother phoned the police.

You may ask why the police and the local authority became involved yet again. The father of the baby assaulted the mother and for her and the baby’s protection she phoned the police. She did so in the belief that the police would at least protect her and her daughter. Instead they snatched the baby and handed her over to the local authority and this small baby was handed to a foster carer. The police did this on the instructions and with the collusion of the local authority. In addition they lied to the mother when they took the baby. There were two witnesses to these lies. During interview with a witness present the police tried to have the mother make a serious false accusation against the father. She refused. The police then issued false information to the Local Authority which they had to later apologize for on instructions from the IPCC after the mother had made an official complaint. In addition the police never made any attempt to carry out a proper investigation into the assault. When the mother approached the local authority the following day they refused to tell her anything. She had no idea where her baby was or how she was, she was told nothing. Again I was witness to this.

The mother was then accused by the local authority of being the cause of her baby girl’s ‘failure to thrive’. The baby had been placed in foster care with an “experienced nurse”. However, this ‘failure to thrive’ continued unabated. Eventually, four weeks later the baby was taken to hospital by the foster carer and had a nasal feeding tube inserted. The mother had said all along that the feeding problem was medically based. This theory was ridiculed by the local authority and another agency involved. The local authority in their desire to prove they were correct then jumped at the chance of using information from the father. This information was passed to them the day after the father had been arrested for assaulting the mother. Were they interested that the father’s information may have been tainted by his arrest and an eight hour incarceration in a police cell? No, they had no interest in that side of the affair. I also suspect they do not have the intelligence to look at claims such as this as being spurious. Their interest was simply to prove their original thoughts as being right. They never asked the mother for her side of the event. They were not interested in looking at this from both sides. The truth was the last thing they wanted to surface.

So here they had information in line with their own thoughts. They could use this against the mother. Whether it was the truth or not was of no interest to them. An assessment was ordered by the court through another family organization. Again what happened during this assessment was the staff involved where totally ignorant of what they were doing. Again there was no compassion or understanding that the mother was suffering from untreated PND. Assessors with no medical qualifications tried to pry into the mother’s past medical history. As with the hospital staff they acted in total ignorance to what damage they may have done. It was only the mother’s tenacity and self awareness that stopped them. To make matters worse at the end of the assessment they blatantly lied to the mother in front of a witness. The evidence of these lies surfaced sometime later as the case progressed.

Numerous tests done on the mother over the following year proved that the information being used against her had not only been suspect but was untrue. These tests were at the insistence of Cafcass, who admitted the tests were in violation of the mother’s Human Rights but pressed for them anyway. Then another blow to their insidious accusations against the mother arose. Cafcass and the local authority are now working hand in hand to damn the mother. It was obvious this was now a vendetta against the mother, this was no longer about protection of the child. They, the social services, eventually, ten months after the mother voiced her concern that her daughter’s problems were medical, sent the baby to a specialist who they hoped would confirm their view of the cause of the baby’s problems. This backfires on both agencies. The baby is diagnosed by specialists as having a rare incurable condition. One of the main misdiagnosis of this condition is ‘failure to thrive’. This was discovered ten months after the mother’s insistence that her daughter’s problems were medically based. It should also be noted that the mother was not alone in her thoughts. Shortly after voicing her thoughts a Consultant Paediatrician had issued a report in which it is stated it would of advantage to have these tests done on this baby. His recommendation was also ignored by both local authority and the Cafcass Guardian.  Had the mother’s fears been acted on sooner by the local authority instead of their adherence to their own misguided agenda, the baby may have been saved from unnecessary pain and suffering she had experienced in her so far short life. Later a consultant pediatrician asked the local authority for information that was required to allow the hospital set up a programme of care for this small vulnerable baby. It took the hospital three requests over a period of three months to get this vital information released by the local authority. Proof that the health and welfare of this small vulnerable baby was of no concern to the local authority, this is in line with other incidents where the same lazy attitude of the local authority’s lack of concern for the health and general welfare of this child in their care surfaced.

This incurable condition was missed at first by three hospital pediatric consultants although there were some ten indicators pointing to it. Two chromosome tests were done and both were lost and a third was ordered, this third general test failed to find the condition. It is also interesting that the foster carer at one point wished to take the baby to A&E as she was concerned that the baby had apparently injured her left arm. It was a, as yet unnamed, non-medical, social worker from the local authority who made the decision not to have the baby examined. It was discovered some months later from x-rays that the baby had had a fractured arm and also discovered there had been various compression fractures to the spine. These had happened whilst the baby was in the care of the local authority. The local authority although required by law to inform the parents did not do so. The local authority then withheld the information on these fractures until it was finally revealed in a doctor’s report one year later. The fact remains they covered up the occurrence of fractures and told no one until the doctor’s report was issued. Had this happened when the baby had been in the mother’s care there is no doubt that she would have been arrested for child abuse and more than possibly jailed. Was anyone within the local authority held responsible for not having the baby medically examined, of course not, the system does not consider this. They are protected from prosecution by the secrecy that is in place to protect the child! This of course is wrong - it is plainly obvious that the child was the victim of their abuse.

Did this new information on the baby’s incurable condition change the authorities mind and return the baby to the mother. No it did not. The local authority racked up and increased the pressure on the mother and treated her in a way that can only be described as humiliating and degrading in its application. She was treated as low life and as if she was the scum of the earth. I suspect that they were in some way transferring their own values of life onto the mother. They saw her as a threat to their warm and comfortable positions within the system. She had had the audacity to do the unthinkable, fight back for the sake of her daughter.

They employed a psychiatrist who is known for his misogynist view of the world. For a massive fee, and I do mean massive, he gave the diagnosis they wished him to give. So he picks that which no one can challenge, the reason being is that it does not exist in pure medical terms. Ask for a scientific medically proven definition and you will find that none exists. That is why the authorities love it so much. It has become the tour de force behind the condemnation of many women who have been caught in this insidious trade of baby abduction by government for profit. If there was any doubt in my mind that the diagnosis was given for purely financial return it was soon dispensed with by remarks made outside court. When someone says ‘I go where the money is’ would you reader consider this to be anything other than what it implies. Remember the title of this series. Family Court Corruption.

Family Court Corruption - Chapter 5

One has to look at the situation the mother is placed in. The mother, during pregnancy, was informed that there may be something wrong with the child she was carrying. Downs Syndrome was voiced as a possibility amongst several other problems. This is a fear that I am sure all expectant mothers dread to hear. There is no way anyone, and in particular the male fraternity can know what effect this has on the mother. One could read all the books ever produced on the subject of pregnancy and never come close to how the mother actually feels.

There would be in most people’s minds an expectation that the hospital staff in a maternity ward would understand to some degree at least what this mother was going through. Especially as most of the nurses in the department were women. Her new baby daughter was ill. The fears that she had harboured during pregnancy flooded back.

Did she receive the understanding and compassion as one would expect from hospital staff. No she did not! What she was met with was outright conflict, hostility and a total lack of concern for her feelings. She was literally pushed aside and expected to react as if nothing untoward had happened or was happening to her new baby. As if the situation she and her baby were in was all perfectly normal. The application of any compassion and human understanding was absent and the mother was plunged, understandably, into Post Natal Depression (PND).

She was criticized by hospital staff shortly after the birth for looking ‘disheveled’. She had given birth, her new precious little daughter was ill and what did they expect, a Vogue model! Where was the humanity? This was not a Hollywood movie it was real life, there were no make-up artists or hairdressers waiting to spring into action. She asked for a consultation with a midwife as she did not feel as she expected she would have. The euphoria she had expected to feel after the birth was not there. The rush of instant maternal feeling she had anticipated was not there. In its place was confusion. A confusion caused by all the different information she was getting from the staff and their insensitive and unfriendly attitude.

Instead of sitting her down to calmly explain what was happening and why, she was met with raw hostility from certain members of the nursing staff. This lack of sympathy was compounded by staff untrained in mental health accusing the mother of having a mental health problem. The request she had made regarding PND was totally ignored and she was threatened with the police arrest if she continued showing signs of these spurious remarks of mental health problems. Part of the problem was that despite suffering from PND she managed to be assertive in her attitude. This was then considered by hospital staff to be aggression. A mistake many make when presented with assertiveness. She was warned that the police would be called.

Can anyone imagine the effect of this? This new mother was being assertive and showing concern for her new daughter who was ill. The attitude was ‘how dare she be assertive’! For nine months a woman carries her baby, she is told there may be problems with her unborn daughter. Would it have been outside the realms of possibility for her to expect some modicum of understanding and compassion? Instead she was met with conflict and threatened with arrest.

It was at this point that the hospital staff decided to call in the local authority social services. There is now suspicion that social services were informed even before the baby was born. This suspicion is based on documentation produced by a hospital midwife during the pregnancy. Documentation that the mother was never informed about. It was only much later that it came to light. It contained information that was totally wrong and should have been checked by a simple phone call to the mother’s GP. This decision to call social services was backed by members of the hospital staff who had never met, talked to, or otherwise had any contact with the mother. It was purely an administrative decision taken on what can only be described as the opinion of staff untrained to deal with this situation. It became obvious that a certain degree of personal animosity from some of the staff also existed.

Meetings were held between the hospital and the social services where decisions were made that the parents were presented with as a fait accompli. There was no consultation process with the parents where they could give their views. The essence of this is the meetings held by the social services and hospital staff could in fact be unlawful. Similar circumstances had been challenged previously in the Appeals Court and had been found to be unlawful and any decision taken at the meeting deemed to be invalid.

The outcome of the meeting was an agreement which at first the mother refused to sign. Not because she did not agree with it, it was simply that it was handwritten and totally illegible. I have seen a copy of this handwritten document and frankly it looks as if an illiterate chicken had walked across the paper. If what I saw was an indication of the written communication methods accepted within the local authority then I am of the opinion that those producing the document need to go back to school. Somewhere around the second or third grade would be appropriate. The mother simply asked for it to be typed. Part of this agreement was that the social services demanded that the mother have a Mental Health Assessment under the Mental Health Act. It has subsequently found that this is a favourite tactic of the social services. It is designed to confuse and upset the mother even further. No consideration that she had an ill baby. It should also be noted that this agreement was presented to the parents without the chance to consult with a legal representative. It was also accompanied with a verbal threat, “sign or you don’t get your baby home” A threat that is nothing less than blatant blackmail, which I may add is a criminal offense and something that must to be looked at in more detail by some other authority.

The result was the mother had two mental health assessments in twelve hours. The first carried out when one of the ‘professionals’, a social worker, was not qualified to be there but subsequently allowed to produce a report. Twelve hours later another assessment was done by properly qualified people. This second assessment concluded that the mother presented as no danger to her baby. All this carried out while this new mother’s baby daughter lay ill in the next room. The author was present at the second assessment and during it a nurse was openly hostile to the mother for nothing other than what can only be described as purely personal reasons. I was later informed that this was one of the hospital staff to whom the mother had been assertive. It was also the nurse who had said to the mother, who when observed to handle her daughter very gently, “babies are a lot more robust than you think” This remark should be held in the mind considering events that were to follow a year later.

Eventually the mother and daughter were allowed home with social services making the father the “primary carer”. At a meeting with social worker in the family home the mother tried to negotiate a small change to the agreement she had been forced to sign. The social worker present only said one sentence “I can see we are in conflict I will have to talk to my manager”. At this he got up and left. There was no discussion, no attempt to listen or negotiate. Again I attended this meeting; my own feelings were that the changes the mother proposed were sensible and not in any way confrontational. It was a simply an attempt by the mother to allow her family some breathing space and attend to their daughters needs. To be in a position where if required they could ask for help. Which later she did and was told there was none available. What she was actually told was, ‘if you need help you have to find it for yourself’.

However this was followed by another ten day admission to hospital for the baby. This time to another hospital at the mother’s insistence, as she considered it superior for the treatment of children. This second hospital stay was due to feeding difficulties continuing and the baby had lost two ounces in weight. Feeding was taking on average an hour and half. This was following the regime suggested by the original hospital to feed on demand.. During ten days her daughter was in hospital the mother visited every day. It required her to make a journey of eighty four miles a day. The father made one visit lasting twenty five minutes. You will note that so far there has been no mention of the father. That is to this point he had been ineffective in protecting his new family. It should also be noted that he had already moved out of the family home leaving the mother to cope on her own despite he had been designated by the social services to be the primary carer.

Family Court Corruption - Chapter 4

The local authority searched around for more ammunition that they could use against this mother. This digging finally went to the past, a past that was over thirty five years old. Can anyone honestly say that they are the same person as they were thirty years ago? In this case the mother certainly was not because that past went back to when she was three years old. What happened to her at that age was pushed to the forefront and she was asked to explain it. Explain what exactly? Explain something she had no control over. Explain it to people she had only just met, who had no understanding of what they were asking or the damage their question could have done. This incident shows the low mentality of the people that she was dealing with. Using the past like this against anyone deprives the victim, and victim this mother has become yet again, of the ability to live in the present. It causes the suppression of genuine emotions and forces the subject, for that is what this mother is considered to be, a subject, an object, not a human being. It was an attempt to shut her off from the experience of embracing the present. It was a past the mother had fought for years to understand and learned to cope with. A fight that was successful thanks to a professional psychotherapist who worked with her to bring her out of the darkness into a place of safety. The local authority marched in with their jackboots and tried to trample her efforts into the ground. There was no attempt by the local authority to look further than the end of their collective noses. Noses that were in my opinion stuck where the sun does not shine.

In this case it was the baby involved who threw her own unexpected spanner into the works of the local authority. The authority had early on decided that this baby would be one ripe for adoption. She would be easy to place; in the words of one social worker to the grandmother “we have loads of people who will adopt her”. Behind this statement there is more than meets the eye. Here we start to see the true reason of the local authority involvement. It is not about the protection of the child. It is the rush of the local authority to meet adoption targets. Targets that they and many in Government constantly deny exist.

The baby suffered some setbacks when she was born. Several concerns were indicated even before the birth. These were indicators that not all was well. The mother was in a position where she had to decide if she wished to carry the pregnancy to term. It was at this point she showed a determination that no matter what the problems may be she would see her daughter born.

The concerns shown in various prenatal scans appeared at first to be unfounded at birth. Twelve hours later the specter of the previous fears arose and her daughter had to be transferred to the Special Baby Unit. The baby could not feed correctly. Eventually the baby was transferred to another hospital and was diagnosed with a complaint which is not rare but is uncommon and can be reasonably treated by medicine and diet. After another period in hospital she was eventually allowed home. What happened in the period between hospital and being allowed home is what gives great cause for concern.

White Rose - Why?

An explanation of why the White Rose.

The White Rose was the name of a group of students in Munich in 1941 who opposed the Nazi party. Several of their members were arrested by the Gestapo and executed. A full description of the movement can be found here - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERwhiterose.htm

Makes for interesting reading considering the state of Justice in the UK Family Courts, some other interesting reading with reference on the subject of the Forced Adoption now being carried as policy of the UK Government can be looked at here and show that it is not new, just a change of name – The Lebensborn Programme was the original. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/children.html you may be surprised.

The Procrustean Solution - Chapter 3

 Procrustean Solution (Procrustes [Προκρούστης] )

What, you may wonder, does this have to do with a case in the Family Court? It is in the presentation of evidence to the Court by the Social Services that falls foul to the Procrustean Solution.

Firstly who was Procrustes? He was a figure from Greek Mythology a blacksmith and bandit from Attica. He would invite travellers to spend the night in one of two iron beds. If the traveller was too big for the short bed Procrustes would chop off the traveller’s legs to fit the bed, if too short for the longer bed, he would be stretched to fit. The original one size fits all!

It's important when faced with a problem to consider it carefully and find a solution that fits it, rather than forcing it into a premixed solution, a Procrustean bed. Templates and models of past situations are useful, but it is they that must fit the empirical circumstances, not the other way around.
The local authority makes the bed—the solution—fit their needs. Doing this takes a lot of knowledge. Those in the local authority do not have the knowledge of a sufficient quality. If they had had it would not be so easily discovered that the bed of information presented in the Family Court case is so badly made.

It takes craft and skill to make the bed fit the sleeper. It requires one to listen carefully to the scope of the problems. What are the real problems? One must ask have we obtained enough information. Have we supplied the right information? Is the information supplied true?
Crafting the solution to fit the problem also means exercising informed choices. Deciding what's really important and what is fluff? The local authority used more fluff than fact in the hope that no one would notice. In this case someone did notice!
One must not try to envision how to make the solution work until the problem has been thoroughly understood by those being asked to adjudicate. The adjudicators to do this efficiently and to the best of their abilities must be supplied with all the available information. In too many cases the adjudicators are not supplied with the proper and true information. In layman's terms they are lied to.

It's too easy to take up the approach of Procrustes and adjust the problem to fit the solution. As the local authority does when presenting their information to the Court.  I fear that the local authority managers and some in executive positions approach this daunting issue by emulating the misguided Greek guy. Their answer is to stretch the problems on the rack until they see it as the perfect fit or they amputate those inconvenient parts of the problem that do not give them their desired result. If the child and parents involved suffer they do not care. The social services have the result they want regardless of the what the truth is.

Worse still, do they know when they are taking those kinds of actions or even worse,  are they  ashamed when their Procrustean tendencies are exposed.

It becomes business as usual with no thought given to the damage done to the individuals involved, so at many levels within the local authority the evil that is Procrustes and his bed survive unabated.

Sometimes the bed fits. But often it doesn't, and the result of the local authority trying to use their preconceived distorted elements and presenting them to the Court as the truth is extremely misleading and very dangerous especially when engaged as we are in legal action. We are not here dealing with some inanimate object. Here we are considering the long term care of a young child. In spite of this being a human tragedy the local authority decides to try and use methods to gain their aims by any means at their disposal without regard to the truth of the situation.

Ultimately, emulating Procrustes often results in the same fate he suffered. Having made their bed, the local authority will eventually be forced to recline in it, stretched to fit or sans legs.

Family Court Corruption Chapter 2

It is this desire by a local authority department to exert control and to bury an individual’s right to a family that first brought me into the arena that I now fight in. It was the local authority trying to impose their dictatorial control over a new mother that was directly responsible for my involvement.

At first I thought it can’t be this bad! My reaction was the same as many I have experienced since “No they can’t do this can they?” As time progressed I was to get a serious wake up call. Yes they can and do. Not only was it bad, it got worse as time went one.

The arena that the fight takes place is laughingly called “Family Court”. The adherence to any semblance of family or family values is the last thing you will find in this system. In the arena of this system where there two sets of rules, the family has to follow one set. Their rules are fixed and rigid. The other side in this combat field is the local authority. Their rules are totally different. They are allowed to move the goalposts when it looks as if the family will score a victory. They, the local authority, are allowed to lie and cheat in the knowledge that no one will stop them. They form with a like minded group of solicitors, barristers and expert witnesses who will touch forelock and hold out their large caps to collect the ill gotten gains being offered. They line up to take their prebooked seats on the gravy train as it leaves the station. The local authority has no rigidity applied to their method of operation. The law states that both parties operate under the same rules, however, the local authority just ignore that and operate as they see fit.

 

In the family case I have been involved with against a local authority, they have acted to impose tyrannical control over the proceedings. This has been at the expense of the application of common sense and empathic understanding. In their rush to control the situation they have used the aforementioned statistical information to try and enhance their case.

This has been supported by the constant changing of conditions, the application of misinformation, or in layman’s terms lies, and the blind adherence to the rule book. No rule book ever written can cover all eventualities. The old adage holds true in this situation, ‘The rule book is written for the adherence of fools and the guidance of wise men’. In this case the latter seems to be in very short supply when one is dealing with the local authority. There was a high degree of self interest in that they offered nothing but garbled and incomplete evidence. This avoided logical argument and sought to influence any verdict and hid their true intentions from their victims.

The local authority employed professional experts in many disciplines to give results that they try to convince us to be independent. However, these ‘experts’ are subject to the instructions of their paymasters and as such cannot be termed independent in the true sense. The information fed to these experts by the local authority is tainted and never investigated as to its veracity. When the expert’s income depends on their compliance with their paymaster’s demands there is no profit for the expert to carry out a deep investigation to find where the truth resides. The instructions of the local authority enforcers are paramount.

The expert’s ability to question properly is destroyed by a system designed to discourage honesty. The local authorities supply these experts with information that can only have one eventual outcome. The result the authority requires is controlled by the questions they ask. These questions are designed and based to give the classic Procrustean Solution.

Family Court Corruption Chapter 1

Corruption in the United Kingdom Family Court System Chapter one

Children, like all human beings, are subject to their own genetic individuality. It is this genetic diversity that makes the application of standard values and statistics in the assessment of a child a practice that should be treated with some suspicion. The application of statistics in relation to the development of a baby is basically an exercise in which the baby is treated as an object. Children are not prone to rules imposed by an unrealistic reliance on statistical analysis.

The idea that any child should reach a certain standard of development by a certain age is frankly something that should be discouraged. It is a vein of thought more akin to the past than to the present. Those who follow the rigid standards based on statistical information are themselves trapped in the past. It is interesting that Albert Einstein did not fit the statistical norm. It is well documented that he did not start to speak until between the ages of 3 to 4. Under the statistical criteria applied to children in general he would have been classed as being developmentally delayed.

What the application of the average does is try (or compels) to squeeze the individual’s biological diversities in the uniformity of a predetermined cultural mould. That there be no individuality and that children should be chosen from a long line at the supermarket. That the idea of natural procreation is flawed because the offspring does not fit into what they have read in their books and manual on childcare. They have forgotten to look at the human diversity of the human race. Without which they themselves would not exist.

It is an adherence to a past that expected individuals to conform to a preconceived strict cultural code of conduct and development. It was a code that buried individuality under the desire of those with authority to control all the thoughts and actions of the population that came within their geographic control. It was a method of applying dictatorial rule over the people. The problem now is that in certain aspects of modern life it appears that these oppressive values are returning and being used by some departments in government to control sections of the community.

There always comes a point when what can be called “the human spirit”, as has been seen in the recent uprisings of the general public in the Arab world, comes to the fore and opposes the authority trying to impose any form of draconian control.

It is the authority that appears to have no understanding of what freedom actually means that will ultimately fall. It is the political will of those voted into a democratic system to look after freedom that will eventually be on trial when they neglect their duties. If they continue to bury their heads in the sand to the plight of the people then the people must eventually move against them.