To think not looking like you parents

[DevonLodger]

Is not a good reason to take a child into care and carry out a DNA test.

I look nothing like my daughters. Should I be worried?

[Kewcumber]

I think laws should be applied even handedly to all people based on the evidence or reasonable suspicions and appropriate action should be taken regardless off the colour or ethnicity of either parents or child.

I am amazed that so many people are so resistant to the idea that this family (in Ireland) were treated differently just because they were ethnically Roma rather than white Irish.

[SeaSickSal]

MrsDeVere, I am not outraged because in Maria and the Tallaght case they were quite right to remove them until they had ascertained who the children were and whether or not they should be with the people they were with.

In Tallaght the hospital cocked up and said that they couldn't confirm the details of the girls birth when in fact they should have been able to. But when they couldn't verify it, again they needed to ascertain who she was. Could you imagine the outrage if she had been an abducted child, somebody had reported their suspicions and her ID couldn't be verified but they returned her?

In Maria's case it was absolutely right, it still hasn't been ascertained if she was sold or exploited and until it is she absolutely should be removed to a safe place and the case investigated.

I would expect in any case, no matter what the race of the people involved if a report is made that a child is living with people who have abducted them that child should be removed and kept safe until it can be confirmed that they are not. I'm not going to get outraged that sensible course of action was taken.

The press response was racist whipping people up into a frenzy about roma kidnapping white kids. And it's also highly likely that the removals in Ireland were as a result of reports prompted by the same frenzy. But the removal of the children was right until they found out who they were.

[friday16]

I would expect in any case, no matter what the race of the people involved if a report is made that a child is living with people who have abducted them that child should be removed and kept safe until it can be confirmed that they are not.

Seriously? So if I phone up my local social services, randomly nominate a child from my street and say I'm not sure that are their "parent's" child, they should be removed to place of safety on my say-so alone, and no other evidence? Have you thought that through? Did you miss out the word "credible" or "plausible" perhaps?

[SeaSickSal]

Kewcumber, the girl in Tallaght was removed because claims were made to a journalist that she was an abducted child. I assume the boy in Athlone was similar.

If the police receive reports like this about anybody claiming they have an abducted child with them they are always going to do exactly the same thing. And that is put the child in temporary care while the parents provide identification for the children and they verify that the ID is genuine.

In the Athlone case he was only away from his family for a matter of hours while they did this. In the Tallaght case she was away for a few days but only because the hospital cocked up and claimed the birth hadn't taken place there when it had.

It's a straight forward procedure, they would do it to anybody if claims like this were made.

It was the people who rang up and made the reports were probably racist and whipped into a frenzy by the media. But the investigation wasn't.

[friday16]

If the police receive reports like this about anybody claiming they have an abducted child with them they are always going to do exactly the same thing.

Let's try this out.

If I phone the police up and say that I believe that Kate Middleton has abducted a child and is passing him off as her own, do you seriously believe that the police either would or should remove Prince George to a place of safety pending DNA testing?

Or is it more likely that I would, depending on how convincingly I made the case, either be arrested for wasting police time or end up sectioned?

So that's not anybody, then, is it? There's some threshold of plausibility required, isn't there?

[SeaSickSal]

Well Friday what do you think the police or social services should do if someone reports to them that they suspect a child is abducted? Ignore it? Chuck it in the bin?

More often than not if police are informed of the whereabouts of an abducted child it's going to be a child abducted by one of their parents but they will still follow it up and check a child is who they say they are and are with who they're meant to be if an allegation is made.

Honestly, what do you think they do if an allegation of abduction is made concerning people who are not Roma?

[Kewcumber]

In the tallaght case - they produced a birth certificate and a passport. And they still removed her for three days.

If you produced a birth certificate and a passport for your child (even one who doesn't look like you) do you really think the most appropriate response would be for the police/SS to take your child away for days?

Exactly what suspicions were reported to the police apart from "she doesn't look like them" - I'd really love to know because on the basis that she is actually their birth child no-one can possibly have had any credible information.

If what was reported in the Guardian is true...

"An unnamed female member of the public tipped off television channel TV3 about the presence of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child at the house on Monday morning.

A researcher at the station passed on the Facebook message to an investigative TV3 reporter, who then contacted the gardai at the station in Tallaght."

then there was no basis whatsoever to remove this child except that she was blonde and they were not.

If more information comes to light I will eat my words but its a nice easy way to bait your Roma neighbours isn't it, dob them in anonymously to the media/police.

People are very naive if they think the fate of the vast majority of abducted children is to be living with a family in the same house for a number of years, attending school, in good health and happy (and thats according to the authorities).

[SeaSickSal]

Friday that is a completely facetious example as you well know.

But if you were to ring the police and say that you had information that Mrs Bloggs who lived on your road had a child with her who you believed was abducted then they would follow it up.

[Kewcumber]

and I think you are kidding yourself if you think that DS (who is a different race to me) was reported to SS as not looking like me, would be removed. Because I am white and I talk posh and he is brown.

Social services are going to be very busy - because its a lovely way to piss off people you have an issue with if SS are going to take every child away who's reported as not looking like their parents even if you can produce a birth certificate and passport.

[Kewcumber]

They would follow it up.

I have had extensive experiences with social services.

They wouldn't remove my child on the basis of this kind of anonymous tip off with no actual credible information at all. I am almost convinced of it. As convinced as I can be. And I have been involved on the sharp end of an unpleasant unfounded accusation which was way more serious than "he doesn't look like you" and the child still wasn't removed whilst investigations were taking place.

[SeaSickSal]

Kewcumber I completely agree with you about the woman who made the allegations to the reporter.

But what you're missing in your account is the fuck up that the hospital made in that case. The police called the hospital to verify the document was genuine and the hospital told them that nobody of that name had given birth on that date at that hospital.

Because the hospital fucked up the police were left in a situation where they had a child who was alleged to be abducted. They could only go on the information the hospital was giving them and that information indicated that the document was forged.

Do you honestly think in a case like that, where an allegation of abduction has been made and there are strong indications that the documents given as ID are forged. Just give the child back and hope everything turns out okay?

You're saying all his with the benefit of hindsight, but the police genuinely didn't know. What do you think the police would have done if they had an allegation, doubts over the ID but let her go home and then it turned out she was abducted and she had either disappeared or been harmed? They would have been absolutely crucified.

[HoldMeCloserTonyDanza]

Here is a screenshot of the "tip off" that led the Gardai to snatch a child from her home and family for three days.

A poorly written racist rant. And TV3 bloody knew it, because they tried to blur out the racist slur while still claiming "credit" for the scoop.

Paul fucking Connolly considered this bullshit to be a "very very specific" allegation of child abduction. Look at him salivating over it, the utter moron. When the phrase "The Romas are robing [sic] babies all over Europe" crosses someone's lips, that's a safe sign you can ignore whatever else they say. Not pass it along to the Garda Press Office (Press Office, you'll note. Not the specialist unit that protects children. Says it all about Connolly's motivations.)

[HoldMeCloserTonyDanza]

Oh and that toddler in Athlone was not only away from his parents for a couple of hours (not that that would be acceptable even if it was the case).

He was taken from his parents at 10pm at night and not returned until lunchtime the next day.

He is TWO.

[HoldMeCloserTonyDanza]

They left his four year old sister at home, though. In the company of suspected child abductors. She looks Roma, though, so fuck her, right?

[SeaSickSal]

But Kewcumber, the woman who reported it didn't say she was just reporting it because she didn't look like them, she said she had information that she was abducted as part of a child benefit scam.

Again, you are saying this with hindsight, because we now know that these children DID belong to the people they were with so we know that the caller can't have genuinely had this information and must have been ringing up purely because she looked different.

But the police didn't know this at the time. The claim could have been genuine. They may have suspected that it was only being reported because she looked different but they couldn't just assume that was the case.

I honestly cannot believe what I'm reading. On what planet is it not reasonable for the police to check the identity of a child who is reported abducted? It's not just Roma, there was a girl in New Zealand who was reported to be Madeleine McCann who had to be ID'd and DNA tested. It's highly likely that in that case they did exactly the same thing. Took her ID and verified it was genuine with the issuing authority. Job done.

Nobody has explained to me what exactly should be done as an alternative to checking the child's ID and verifying it when a child is alleged to be abducted. It's just common sense.

[HoldMeCloserTonyDanza]

The hospital did not fuck up! The guards fucked up by giving the wrong name (the mothers maiden name and the child's name in use, not her given name) and the wrong address.

The Irish Idependent sent a reporter straight to the hospital to check the records directly and immediately found the correct record. The fucking Indo!

It is totally reasonable to expect the gardai to be capable of conducting the same level of investigation as the bloody Indo. It is totally unacceptable to let bigotry and incompetence lead to removing children from their homes.

[HoldMeCloserTonyDanza]

They can check the child's ID without separating her from her family for three bloody days!!

[SeaSickSal]

So the child in Athlone, it might have been longer than a couple of hours but as soon as the places that could verify his ID were open he was returned to his parents.

I'm not arguing this anymore but I still think it's absolute nonsense that the police shouldn't make sure a child is safe and is who they're supposed to be when an allegation of abduction is made.

[HoldMeCloserTonyDanza]

Did you read the FB screenshot, Sal?

Do you think that person looked credible enough to have a child removed from their parents on nothing but their say-so?

[friday16]

Took her ID and verified it was genuine with the issuing authority. Job done.

Indeed. Which is exactly what the Irish didn't do. They started a hare running of checking whether the ID was genuine but mis-issued, which is a whole other world of fraud.

It's trivially easy to check if a passport is genuine if you are the police of the issuing country: you quote the passport number, and you are shown the passport office's copy of the photograph. You might even be able to do this yourself for a passport with a chip in it with the right equipment: I don't know when Ireland started issuing them, but not all current UK passports have chips in.

But here the police went all Frederick Forsythe and, starting from the assumption that the passport was the result of a fraudulent issuing process, asked for evidence stronger than you need to produce to obtain a passport in the first place. And they did that without the slightest evidence, other than a racist tip-off on Facebook.

So here's what you think is "reasonable". A racist reports a family, anonymously, on Facebook, for having an abducted child. Not a particular abducted child, but just "oh, that doesn't look right". The police rock up and are shown a passport and some other ID (let's put aside that a lot of children in the UK don't have passports, or any other form of photo ID, particularly children in marginalised communities who don't have the twenty quid a year it costs to maintain a passport). The police immediately say that the passport is not sufficient, and start to perform a primary background check.

You still have answered why any of this requires removal of the child. The child was not in physical danger. There was no suggestion that the child was being abused, or, at least, abused to any extent which would of itself provide grounds for removal. We're always told that removal is incredibly hard, and children being beaten black and blue can't be removed because of that. But here, with no substantive abuse allegations, with valid ID documents, but merely on the say so of a racist rant and the police suddenly deciding that passports can't be trusted, a child was removed.

My neighbours have adopted a child from Vietnam. Suppose I phone the police up and report them (your Mrs Bloggs example). Hospital records? Good luck with that. DNA testing? Obviously not. What evidence could they produce to prevent their child being removed for as long as it took to re-check the entire adoption process? And then, for fun, what happens if I report them again the following month? And the month after that? After all, they might be killing Chinese children and getting a fresh one shipped in each month, and we can't be too careful, can we?

[mynameisnotmichaelcaine]

Great post Friday. This is institutional racism at its worst. waits for police to take DD because she is olive-skinned and black-haired and we are pale and pasty realises they won't as we are white British and middle-class

[DevonLodger]

I've asked mumsnet to withdraw my last post which I posted without reflecting on and I went too far. Actually, I don't think that about the police at all I think they were just trying to do their job in a frenzy of hysteria. Sorry. I do stand by what I said about needing corroboration to investigate though.

[Venushasrisen]

The child was not in physical danger

How can we know this? If SS had had previous dealings with this family or the extended family because of suspected child abuse, or a member of the family or extended family is a known paedophile, or a dozen other reasons to behave cautiously, the police might err on the side of caution. SS info is surely not available to the general public or press. We just don't know.

[friday16]

If SS had had previous dealings with this family or the extended family because of suspected child abuse, or a member of the family or extended family is a known paedophile

Then why would "they're blond and their parents aren't" be either new information, or sufficient to tip any balance? If social workers were already involved, what, precisely, would a report that the parents look a bit foreign and the child doesn't add to the available information, such that previously the child did not need to be taken into care, but now they do? And if there were such concerns, why would a DNA test or other identifying checks be sufficient to return a child to such a potentially abusive situation?

Sorry, you're grasping at straws. Are you say that there could be a situation where social services had been engaged, up to but not at the point of removal, but an anonymous tip off that the child's hair was a different colour to the parents' would be sufficient to move that balance to the other side?