State Sanctioned Child Abduction: The Cover Is Blown

In 2008, the Family Legal System in England was dealt a massive blow to its operational secrecy as a story broke of a mother and her newborn baby in Nottingham, having been separated illegally and unlawfully by the Local Authority with the collusion of the NHS Trust. His Honour Justice Munby, in reversing this action with an order to the Local Authority to return the child immediately, commented that, among other things, the Local Authority had neither legal authority from any court nor consent from the mother to take the actions that it did.

This case set records. The order for return was made and executed within twenty four hours of the child having been taken. Less than a week later, application for an interim care order was heard and granted by Nottingham County Court. Since then, the child has been taken into care on a full care order with the claim from the Local Authority that the mother had “thrown the baby at a social worker”.

The long and sorry tale of the State taking the offspring of a woman who herself had been in the “care” of the same Local Authority will not be discussed at length here; there are several citations connected to this, however, a few are listed here:

R (G) v Nottingham City Council [2008] EWHC 400 (Admin)

G (R on the application of) v Nottingham City Council [2008] EWHC 152 (Admin)

Re K [2008] All ER 159

What is interesting about this case, is that there is a documented (hence provable) conflict of interest, in that one Ms. Beryl Gilead, St. Mary’s Chambers barrister instructed by Shelton’s Solicitors[1], who represented the father in this case care proceedings, has also represented the Local Authority in public family law on many occasions before and since – in fact, she has listed on her web page on the St. Mary’s Chambers website[2], the fact that she does act for the Local Authority. How then, does she depart from this and act for a parent? The answer is simple: the fact that for some reason, the father supported the Local Authority’s position made it easy for Ms. Gilead to dodge the question of conflict of interest since the father’s (apparent) goal was to separate mother from baby, in concordance with the stated intent of the Local Authority.

As stated intents go, the perennial “removal at birth” and associated plans for long term fostering or adoption concerning children not yet born feature regularly in cases where Local Authorities are already involved in the lives of families, particularly mothers who themselves have been the subject of care situations or of fathers who are reportedly career criminals from a very young age. What is not reported at all, is the fact that a growing number of parents who have no criminal records nor have they had previous involvement with Children Services, are subjected to the kind of treatment one would imagine being meted out to the worst Society has to offer by the Local Authorities simply as a result of disagreeing with family doctors, paediatricians, school staff, police, or housing officers. Disagree with your GP about the nature of a vaccination your child is scheduled for, and you’re immediately labelled as some sort of psychopath; push your child’s school to deal with incidents of assaults on your offspring by other children, or perish the thought school staff, and you’re suddenly abusing your children. Notwithstanding your children are all high-achieving, perfect attendance, always smartly dressed, live with Mummy and Daddy (actual Daddy) who are married, both work for a living; suddenly they’re often absent, disruptive, violent, underachieving and scruffy, and come from a broken home where the parents are always arguing about money and are on welfare – the photographs taken by the local newspapers are one-offs and new uniforms lent by the school (really?)

In 2010, a team of self taught advocates drafted a document that would shake the Family Legal System to its core. This document, which was publicly released at no charge (and is reproduced in full within this book), may well have been the catalyst of the massive wakeup that is currently happening up and down the country.

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[1]Who also represent CAFCASS

[2]http://www.stmarysflc.co.uk/index.asp?selection=Barristers&subsection=Beryl%20Gilead