Justice For Families

This goes back to 2002 - and beyond for the original case, but remains the best documented example of judicial abuse against a woman in an English and Welsh Secret Court.

The abuse continued through the Appeal Court and the New labour Government continued with it in defending the behaviour of Rochdale Social Services in front of the ECHR.

A key feature is that the second husband of "P" (known as "C" in the judgement) who had been previously accused of Witchcraft Syndrome/MSBP in the US, was a "qualified social worker with a doctorate concerning women wrongly accused of being Münchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) abusers."

It would be nice to see that paper, and perhaps it was no coincidence that a social worker with such a view would have his child removed by social workers using a false allegation.

http://www.coe.int/t/e/legal_affairs/legal_co%2Doperation/family_law_and_children%27s_rights/judgments/Press%20release%20P.,%20C.%20and%20S.asp


It's a bit long (for a Press statement) but I've reprinted it below;

Press release issued by the Registrar

CHAMBER JUDGMENT IN THE CASE OF P., C. AND S. v. THE UNITED KINGDOM

The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing a judgment in the case of P., C. and S. v. the United Kingdom (application no. 56547/00).

The Court held: unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair hearing) of the European Convention on Human Rights in respect of the applicant parents;

unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for family life) in respect of the applicant parents regarding the removal of their child at birth;

by 6 votes to 1, that there had been a violation of Article 8 respect of all the applicants regarding the procedures concerning the applications for care and freeing for adoption orders;

unanimously, that no separate issue arose under Article 12 (right to marry).

Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court unanimously awarded 12,000 euros (EUR) each to applicants P. and C. in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 60,000 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)

1. Principal facts

P., born in 1958, is a United States national. C., the husband of P., was born in 1962, and is a British national. S., their daughter, was born in 1998 and is a British and American citizen. They all live in the United Kingdom. In 1985 P. gave birth to B. In 1992 P. and her first husband, B.’s father, separated. In April 1994, the Californian authorities took B. into protective custody, alleging that P. was harming B. by administering laxatives to him inappropriately. On 23 August 1994, the Californian court ordered that B. live with his father. P. was convicted of a misdemeanour under the Californian Penal Code and, on 17 November 1995, was sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to spend three months in custody, which was suspended. On 5 May 1996, the Californian family court approved supervised contact between P. and her son B., once a month for the following three years.
During 1996, P. met C., a qualified social worker with a doctorate concerning women wrongly accused of being Münchhausen’s Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) abusers. and C. married in September 1997 in the United Kingdom. S. was born on 7 May 1998, at 4.42 a.m. The local authority obtained an emergency protection order at about 10.30 a.m. which placed S. under their care. At about 4 p.m., the social workers took S. from the hospital and placed her with foster parents. Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council then applied for a care order under the Children Act 1989. In the meantime, P. and C., who were allowed supervised contact with S., developed an excellent relationship with her, according to the supervising officials. Initially P. was legally represented in the care order proceedings. However, on 5 February 1999, her lawyers applied to the judge to withdraw from the proceedings, alleging that P. was requiring them to conduct the case in an unreasonable manner. The judge permitted them to withdraw and allowed P. an adjournment of four days until 9 February 1999, at which point he refused any further adjournment. On 8 March 1999, after a hearing lasting about 20 days involving numerous witnesses, the judge issued a care order placing S. in the care of the local authority, finding that her moral and physical health would be endangered by leaving her with her parents. The Court found that, although P. and C.’s treatment of S. during contact sessions had been exemplary, P. had a personality disorder and C. would not accept that P. was responsible for harming B. After making the care order, the judge fixed the hearing of the application for the freeing of S. for adoption for one week later on 15 March 1999. P. and C. attended the hearing but did not have legal representation. The judge refused the application of P. for the proceedings to be deferred to allow her to obtain legal representation and issued an order freeing S. for adoption without any provision for continued direct contact between S. and her parents. Leave to appeal was refused and S. was adopted on 27 March 2000. The last contact visit between the P., C. and S. was on 21 July 1999.

2. Procedure and composition of the Court

The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 23 December 1999. It was declared admissible on 11 December 2001 and a hearing was held on 26 March 2002. Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:

Jean-Paul Costa (French), President,
András Baka (Hungarian),
Nicolas Bratza (British),
Gaukur Jörundsson (Icelandic),
Loukis Loucaides (Cypriot),
Corneliu Bîrsan (Romanian),
Mindia Ugrekhelidze (Georgian), judges,

and also Sally Dollé, Section Registrar.

3. Summary of the judgment

Complaints

Under Article 6 § 1, the applicants complained that they did not have access to court or a fair hearing in respect of the freeing for adoption proceedings, where neither were legally represented and where the judge refused an adjournment to permit an application for legal aid. Complaint was also made in respect of the care proceedings, where P. was not legally represented after 5 February 1999. They also criticised the decision-making process before the birth, alleging that they were not properly involved or informed and that it should have been possible to take the matter before a court for a fair examination of the issues before the birth. Under Article 8 of the Convention, the applicants argued that the removal of S. at birth was not necessary for S.’s protection and was disproportionate, pointing to the possibility that S. could have remained in the hospital with her mother under supervision. They also complained about the practice of instituting adoption proceedings together with care proceedings for babies and maintained that freeing for adoption orders were draconian and irreversible, as they made no provision for resuming any form of direct contact in future, which constituted an interference with S.’s right to respect for her family life with her parents, and theirs with her. Under Article 12, they complained that the proceedings put immense strain on their marriage and prevented them from founding a family.

Decision of the Court

Article 6

The Court observed that there could be no doubt of the seriousness of the outcome for P. and C. of the proceedings concerning the care order and a freeing for adoption order. They were deprived of the possibility of bringing up S. in their family and of any future contact with her, which severed their legal relationship with her. Nonetheless, P. was required as a parent to represent herself in proceedings which were of exceptional complexity, lasted 20 days and required a review of highly complex expert evidence. Her alleged disposition to harm her own children, along with her personality traits, were at the heart of the case, as well as her relationship with her husband. The Court concluded that the complexity of the case, along with the importance of what was at stake and the highly emotive nature of the subject matter, required, in the interests of effective access to court and fairness, that P. receive legal assistance. Even if P. was acquainted with the vast documentation in the case, the Court was not persuaded that she should have been expected to take up the burden of conducting her own case. It noted that, at one point in the proceedings, which were conducted at the same time as she was coping with the distress of the removal of S. at birth, P. broke down in the court room and the judge, counsel for the guardian ad litem and a social worker, had to encourage her to continue. The Court also noted that the judge himself commented that if P. had been represented by a lawyer her case would have been conducted differently. Nor was the Court convinced that the importance of proceeding with expedition necessitated the draconian action of proceeding to a full and complex hearing, followed within one week by the freeing for adoption application, both without legal assistance being provided to the applicants. Though it was doubtless desirable for S.’s future to be settled as soon as possible, the Court considered that the imposition of one year from birth as the deadline appeared a somewhat inflexible and blanket approach, applied without particular consideration of the facts of this individual case. S. was, according to the care plan, to be placed for adoption and it was not envisaged that there would be any difficulty in finding a suitable adoptive family (eight couples were already identified by 2 February 1999). Yet though S. was freed for adoption by the court on 15 March 1999, she was not in fact placed with a family until 2 September 1999, a gap of over five months for which no explanation has been given, while the adoption order which finalised matters on a legal basis was not issued until 27 March 2000 more than a year later. Her placement was therefore not achieved by her first birthday in May in any event. Concerning a possible adjournment, it would have been entirely possible for the judge to place strict time-limits on any lawyers instructed, and for instructions to be given for re-listing the matter with due regard to priorities. S. was herself in a successful foster placement and unaffected by the ongoing proceedings. The Court did not find that the possibility of some months’ delay in reaching a final conclusion in those proceedings was so prejudicial to her interests as to justify what the trial judge himself regarded as a procedure which gave an appearance of "rail-roading" her parents. Recognising that the courts were endeavouring in good faith to strike a balance between the interests of the parents and the welfare of S., the Court was nevertheless of the opinion that the procedures adopted not only gave the appearance of unfairness but prevented the applicants from putting forward their case in a proper and effective manner on the issues which were important to them. For example, the Court noted that the judge’s decision to free S. for adoption gave no explanation of why direct contact was not to be continued or why an open adoption with continued direct contact was not possible, matters which the applicants apparently did not realise could, or should, have been raised at that stage. The Court concluded that the assistance of a lawyer during the hearing of the two applications which had such crucial consequences for the applicants’ relationship with their daughter was an indispensable requirement. Consequently, P. and C. did not have fair and effective access to court and there had, therefore, been a breach of Article 6 § 1.

Article 8

The removal of S. at birth The Court noted that there was legitimate cause for concern when the social services discovered that P., who was about to have a baby, had a conviction for harming one of her other children. The local authority were under a duty to investigate under section 47 of the Children Act 1989. The Court is not persuaded that there was any failure to involve the applicants in the investigative procedure which followed. It also appeared that the applicants were aware that removal at birth was one of the options which the local authority were considering. Nor did the Court consider that the local authority could be criticised for not attempting to have the matter of the emergency removal decided in court before the birth. Questions of emergency care measures were, by their nature, decided on a highly provisional basis and on an assessment of risk to the child reached on the basis of the information, inevitably incomplete, available at the time. The Court considered that it was within the proper role of the local authority in its child protection function to take steps to obtain an emergency protection order. There were relevant and sufficient reasons for this measure, in particular the fact that P. had been convicted for harming her son B. and had been found by an expert in those proceedings to suffer from a syndrome which manifested itself in exaggerating and fabricating illness in a child, with consequent significant physical and psychological damage to the child. The Court considered that the decision to obtain the emergency protection order after S.’s birth might be regarded as having been necessary in a democratic society to safeguard the health and rights S. Nonetheless the removal of a baby from its mother at birth required exceptional justification. It was a step which was traumatic for the mother and placed her own physical and mental health under a strain, and it deprived the new-born baby of close contact with its birth mother and of the advantages of breast-feeding. The removal also deprived the father, C., of being close to his daughter after the birth. It was not apparent to the Court why it was not at all possible for S. to remain in the hospital and to spend at least some time with her mother under supervision. Even on the assumption that P. might be a risk to the baby, her capacity and opportunity for causing harm immediately after the birth had to be regarded as limited. Furthermore, there was no suspicion of life-threatening conduct. The Court concluded that the draconian step of removing S. from her mother shortly after birth was not supported by relevant and sufficient reasons and that it could not be regarded as having been necessary in a democratic society for the purpose of safeguarding S. There had therefore been, in that respect, a breach of the applicant parents’ rights under Article 8.

The care and freeing for adoption proceedings

The Court recalled that it had found that the lack of legal representation of P. and C. together with the lack of any real lapse of time between the two sets of proceedings deprived the applicants of a fair and effective hearing in court. Having regard to the seriousness of what was at stake, the Court found that it also prevented them from being involved in the decision-making process, seen as a whole, to a degree sufficient to provide them with the requisite protection of their interests under Article 8. Emotionally involved in the case as they were, the applicant parents were placed at a serious disadvantage, and it could not be excluded that this might have had an effect on the decisions reached and eventual outcome for the family as a whole. In the circumstances, the Court concluded that there has been in this regard a breach of P., C. and S.’s rights under Article 8.

Article 12

The Court recalled that it had found that the removal of S. after birth and the lack of legal representation during the care and freeing proceedings disclosed violations of Article 8. Observing that Article 12 related to the right to found a family and did not concern, as such, the circumstances in which interferences with family life between parents and an existing child might be justified, the Court found that no separate issue arose under Article 12.

Judge Bratza expressed a concurring opinion and Judge Baka expressed a partly dissenting opinion, both of which are annexed to the judgment.

***

The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).

Superb.
What's occurred to me, is how do we convert all these findings in the favour of parents, into stopping the state abusing it's position, and using MSBP.

The ECHR is slow, it's excellent for showing, that these abuses happen, and that the UK is wrong, I was amused and horrified to find the New Labour government supported the use of MSBP. So we are clearly tackling government policy, head on now.
Can we get a order that MSBP findings in the UK are unsafe, due to the extreme numbers being brought forward. Would the SS then type up a description of it, but not name it to "side step" any such findings or blocks put in place by Europe on its use...

How, do we put a blockage up, against MSBP being used and abused, by the SS to take children?

Secrets wrote:The ECHR is slow, it's excellent for showing, that these abuses happen, and that the UK is wrong

It is slow & I can understand the pressure on them with applications coming in from across Europe however they have had long enough to sort out the problem by now.

Secrets wrote:Superb.
What's occurred to me, is how do we convert all these findings in the favour of parents, into stopping the state abusing it's position, and using MSBP.

I'm sure they would quickly replace the "problem" with another, there are bound to be some great theories in psychiatry/psychology that would place children at risk.

However stopping these false allegations of MSBP would be a good start & it goes without saying that it would be worth showing up the current misuse of MSBP.

Here's the snag; I belive in MSBP simply because I know subtle child abuse occurs. We know that cases of suffocation and poisoning occur.

But we don't need a special term for it and the idea that simpering women hurt their children to gain attention from doctors always sounded like physicians having too high an opinion of themselves.

No the problem with MSBP is that the allegation is so easy to make. Just by demanding a doctor makes a second test, disbelieving a result, complaining about a filthy ward, having a autistic/Aspergers/ADHD child is sufficient to attract an allegation. And it doesn't have to be actually perceived as occuring; such as in the case of Fran Lyon, pediatricians can - with witchfinder-like ability "sense" that the woman is likely to be a source of FII/MSBP.

That predicting element of MSBP is new and an indicator as to how the Secret Courts are avidly willing to take on "crank" science. Strictly-speaking if pediatricians or psychiatrists could predict which women will "develop" MSBP without even seeing them then surely the Labour Party (the biggest supporter of MSBP seeing as it knighted it's "father" - Sir Roy Meadow) would be demanding ALL women be checked for such tendencies - just to "reduce the risk to children."

Of course that won't happen - nor will any proper science be funded into the study of the concept; simply because MSBP, with it's associated profiles lifted directly from the 17th century ducking-stool is too useful as a means of controlling "awkward" free-thinking and determined women. Even better feminists endorse it's use as a means to teach mothers a "good lesson".

Getting rid of MSBP and it's-ease-of-use will take years. But it took centuries to get rid of witchcraft allegations against women, and in the early 1990's social workers were still accusing women of witchcraft and an Australian Prespityrian group was doing the same in 1998.