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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to be horrified by the Stolen Children of England

999 replies

LivingOnTheDancefloor · 29/11/2016 22:30

I just watched a French documentary called "England's stolen children" and can't believe this is happening in England. Horrifying, scary, unbelievable, it is like a horror movie...

Basically, social services are taking babies from their parents based on suspicion that abuse might happen in the future, except that the decision is made based on ridiculous things.
A lady had her three children taken from her, including a breastfed baby because she went to the ER for a child's broken ankle and they judged that he must have been beaten by his parents (only based on the ankle). X years later the parents manage to prove the fracture was due to scorbut. And they found out the initial report from the ER says "no sign of fracture".
The judge admitted they shouldn't have taken the children and the parents were innocents. But the children were given to adoption so the parents will never see them again.
That is just one of the stories.
Some women are told while pregnant that their newborn will be taken as soon as he arrives (and thzney do it).
The documentary says it is due to the facts that counties have to reach a number of children given to adoption so they target poor/uneducated parents and find any reason to take their children.
And as fostering costs money to the state they prefer adoption.

AIBU to ask if you heard about it here in the UK? And if yes, what do you think? Could it be true or are they exagerating?

I am really shaken.

www.google.fr/amp/s/researchingreform.net/2016/11/14/englands-stolen-children-controversial-new-documentary-on-forced-adoption/amp/?client=safari

Sorry, no idea how to post links, and I am on my phone

OP posts:
MagicChanges · 10/12/2016 00:00

Oblomov - this relates to a post on the previous page. You copied a paragraph I had written in a post about the clinical psychologist who falsified a report. I was very clear that this was totally unacceptable (how could it not be?) but added that I thought it a bit odd as he was an experienced professional. That was simply an observation I made and was not meant to infer that he had good reason to behave in such an unprofessional manner.

You then commented that you were very sad to see that I was unable to see that these sorts of things happen -How on earth did you arrive at that conclusion? It was absolutely clear what had happened as Spero provided the link with full details. I simply don't understand why so many people take this "all or nothing" position and are unwilling or unable to accept that someone can believe there is room for improvement in the system, but there is not corruption and conspiracy and social workers and other professionals don't routinely lie and falsify reports.

PacificDogwood You are the voice of reason - we've "spoken" before and I can only endorse every word you say in the posts on this thread. I think you're a GP aren't you, and I don't think you'll mind my saying so, as you described yourself once as a "lowly GP" or something similar.

Sperothank you for all the the links. You mentioned somewhere on this thread that there hadn't been much response on the TP about the adoption targets, but I wrote a very long response and it seems to have gone poof......................

TonaldDrump · 10/12/2016 00:04

I know it was lawful but the quality of the process was way way below what I would have expected.

Spero · 10/12/2016 07:17

Magic Changes - there has been virtually no 'official' response to the TP work on targets.
We published a post by Hemming, the ADCS published a short press release and there have been a few articles in Community Care. And that is about it.

This issue deserves way, way more attention. Because look who is more than happy to plug the gap.

Just been sent a message by someone who is member of a Facebook group Hemming frequents. He is now saying that 'the UN' are showing interest in issues raised by the documentary!!

This is insane. I begin to wonder if diminishing his influence in the UK was quite the achievement I had hoped as it seems to have cut him loose to create havoc abroad by promoting his dangerous propaganda and relying on his status as ex MP to keep some credibility.

haystack10 · 10/12/2016 11:11

Google "Lianne Smith why there are questions to be asked" there are 2 sites, one is the uk column, an alternative newspaper and the other is an organisation which helps parents going through care proceedings and they do advocate searching for good legal help.This is a different slant on the Lianne Smith case but I notice there seems to be no mention of the adult daughter who was abused by Lianne Smith's partner.

Spero · 10/12/2016 15:50

UK Column is run by Brian Gerrish. He is associated with all the malignant conspiracists.

Last time I watched a UK Column video they has a mentally ill ex social worker who had just been released from psychiatric hospital taling about children being stolen to order.

The word of the conspiracy theorists is that Lianne Smith's partner was falsely accused and murdered in prison.

He was a paedophile who abused her eldest daughter - she gave evidence against him. He committed suicide. She murdered her children.

MagicChanges · 10/12/2016 17:45

Spero yes Hemming has popped up on the site "Stop Forced Adoption" (run byTim and Julie Haynes) as he often does, stating simply "The UN Nations is showing interest in forced adoption" ...............then there are numerous posts asking for details and will it make any difference here and will they get their children back, and guess what - yep you got it - nothing - not a squek from the geek, quiet as a church mouse. That's his modus operandi though isn't it.

There is an interview on Hemming in Estonia - sorry I can't do links but if you go on the Haines's site you'll see it. Whether he is actually in Estonia I don't know but the interviewer is Estonia. Hemmings is trotting out the same old crap that we've heard time and time again (some case about a baby left alone with a full nappy (no pun intended) who left the child just before the babysitter arrived and so the baby was adopted - he gets his favourite topic in, stolen babies for adoption targets though does state that targets are to move children out of care too. Then he finishes up with that weary business of the social worker in Leicester who was sacked because she didn't agree that the children should be removed and the managers were adamant that they should - I don't honestly know any more details but I can only envisage a situation where a social worker was "swimming against the tide" and the matter couldn't be resolved. It's actually very difficult for a social worker to be sacked as I'm sure you know. I honestly don't think he is going to cause any damage with his crap theories, either here or abroad. He hasn't done much good thus far and he's been on the war path for several years.

Oh yes and he mentioned that many mothers flee to other countries, France, Ireland etc and this was a good idea but of course they needed to be able to speak the language and be able to find employment. That didn't seem to bother him when "putting women in the direction" of the French woman who subsquently claimed that these women didn't want to live in the caravan supplied by Hemming, but in her house and they had no intention of finding work. Tim Haines denies that Hemming was ever involved in this venture.

Re the ex social worker who is mentally ill. On Tim Haines's site they have her being interviewed and whilst she does in fact sound very lucid it is obvious within the first few minutes of the video that she is deluded and it just gets worse. She is however very plausible and has a remarkable memory for dates and events, but on her own admission she has twice been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and I think it's despicable that they are using this woman to further their cause of stolen babies, conspiracies etc.

Sorry - I think I might be hi jacking the thread.

Spero · 10/12/2016 20:13

I think people need to know this.

Not only is Hemming involved in the Gena/Caravans in France horribleness, Tim Haines has threatened the mothers who contacted me about it.

I wrote about it here. I am sad that no journalist wants to take this up. I think it is very newsworthy.

childprotectionresource.online/mums-on-the-run-where-do-they-go-how-safe-are-they/

quaidorsay · 10/12/2016 22:02

Have managed another 20 mins. Webster case featured heavily, and there was a reference to changes following the Climbie case, Sir Nicholas Wilson features heavily, the earlier sw (Maggie Mellon) was interviewed again, both talked about the 6 months requirement, Josephs is referred to briefly as someone who helped a couple within the UK system (not French) with money, Hemmings is interviewed briefly in relation to targets, but what I took from the interview was not conspiracy but more to do with management - how can the sw job be done properly with targets.

DeriArms · 10/12/2016 22:06

Spero - will none of the investigative reporters from any of the broadsheets take it up? It would seem like something the Guardian Social Care section or similar would be able to run with, surely?
As an aside - I'm a social worker with LAC children and young people and I follow your work as closely as I can, I for one am immensely grateful for your posts on MN to date. The conspiracy stuff truly horrifies me, especially the way it's such a distraction from any meaningful dialogue about improving SW systems and practices.

quaidorsay · 10/12/2016 22:07

By the way, my French isn't too bad, but even with basic French I think it would be easy to follow, because the English interviews are sometimes audible in the background, and with the French subtitles you would be able to pause and copy and paste into google translate, i think.

Spero · 10/12/2016 22:25

Maggie Mellon! That is deeply disappointing. I follow her on Twitter, she is working closely with Annie.

A few weeks ago we had a bit of a set too when she seemed to be praising Hemming and then claimed she didn't know who is was. How dishonest. I am quite upset. I had better try and watch it now.

I have tried to get numerous journalists interested including Louse Tickle and Owen B. Of the Guardian. It is apparently 'too complicated' (no it's not) and there are no budgets for investigative journalism anymore (funny how the BBC sent Rachel Royce to France to interview Gena then).

quaidorsay · 10/12/2016 22:52

Yes, I really think you had better! I feel a bit like sam-I-am "watch it watch it you will see".

The gena thing is probably too complicated because she is resident in a different jurisdiction - it is probably one thing to interview and quite another to try to establish allegations. As i said earlier, i would be very surprised if anyone with children can live under the radar in France for very long.

I haven't seen reference to ftse100 yet but i do know a bit about LA outsourcing and it is not beyond the realms of possibility, either it or a parent company.

Re what you said about the sw, I think it is possible to praise aspects of what someone is doing while still not knowing them well or wanting to praise all they do... as you will see from the doc there is no indication anyone on it was talking to each other nor that it was led or commissioned by any particular person (no idea if it was or not)... so I would say don't jump to conclusions (although possibly I am missing the point)

Spero · 10/12/2016 23:20

The 'Gena thing' is not remotely complicated. She gave an interview to the Telegraph in Dec 2015 where she confirmed her current partner beat her up so badly he put her in hospital. She confirmed Hemmings involvement. She says she takes in 8 families a year.

Her partner has also had at least 3 children make allegations against him of sexual abuse.

How many children?

Who has to die or be seriously abused before anyone takes this seriously?

Spero · 10/12/2016 23:22

You expect me to believe that someone would appear in a documentary and express no curiosity about what it was about and what others were saying?

And when that someone got into a Twitter spat with me about the great work Hemming is doing, that person wouldn't say 'o that Hemming! The bloke who was also in that documentary what I did!' - instead of claiming to have no idea who he was.

No. I don't buy that for a second I am afraid.

Spero · 11/12/2016 11:38

Just thought I would share this with you. Just got another email from 'Richard Black'. This is the gentleman who prompted my first ever visit to the police back in October as the first email he sent me along these lines included the charming introduction that on wonder I was still a 'miss' as I looked like a 'drugged up man' and then some threat that I would get what was coming to me.

This is why this 'documentary' and the activities of Hemming are so dangerous. This is what quite a lot of people want to believe:

"Social Services £1.2 billion child snatch fraud!
Unbelievably, social services staff and solicitors are milking £1.2 billion nationally from our council tax and legal aid, by snatching 4,500 children annually from their parents on false pretexts they need to be adopted.
They pick healthy children, under the age of 4 because they can’t remember their addresses to return home. Each year, 2,000 of these are under one year old.
The resulting court battles, council specialists and consultants are then able to stretch out the custody, care, foster and adoption procedures for a year or more, pocketing up to a million per child.
Wrecking young lives
All this is our taxes, used to wreck innocent children’s lives and devastating the lives of parents, all for private profit and political dogma.
The racket begins when social service officers identify poor or defenceless parents, preferably a single mother. They then snatch her child or children, quoting a false deficiency in her parenting.
The next step is to call in consultants, either themselves or their associates, to prepare expensive, falsified psychiatric reports on both the children and the mother, for which they pay themselves as much as £25,000 a month in additional fees. They call in solicitors they work with, one to represent social services, one for the child. Except the one purporting to represent the child is actually working with social services too.
Solicitors from hell
The two sets of solicitors then work together against the interest of the mother and child, dragging out the affair for as long as possible, demanding more psychiatric reports, often taking the mother in to care too. The solicitors’ bills can grow to hundreds of thousands of pounds, more with deliberate delays and adjournments; the social services staff make fortunes out of the consultancy, and by providing housing at up to £800pw per child.
The trauma the mother goes though is unbelievable; the trauma the children suffer with the separation and moving around inside the ghastly council care system, where many of them are abused, can be with them for life. None of that matters: there’s an average of £270,000 to be shared between social services staff and solicitors.
Common Purpose is complicit
This exploitation is enabled via the EU’s Common Purpose, a criminal organisation that manipulates our legal and local government systems for private profit, using members operating inside and outside government.
If social workers need a firm of solicitors to act corruptly, the Common Purpose network has solicitors as members. If they need to shut up parents or grandparents, the CP network has members in the police, including the Chief Constables of entire forces, who will arrest them on trumped up charges. If they need external psychiatrists to falsify reports, CP has them. It has magistrates and judges as members.
Training in trauma and brutality
The creation of massive “trauma through injustice,” the snatching of children for forced adoption, is just one of over 200 Frankfurt School subversion techniques implemented in Britain by the EU since the 1950’s, with Common Purpose and the Freemasons implementing at the local level"

quaidorsay · 11/12/2016 11:59

Spero, it is appalling that you are receiving threats.

If you are concerned about children being hurt, get in touch with the local agencies near to the house, rather than get the press involved. They are in a different jurisdiction, and as residents there they are subject to local law including child protection law. As I said upthread, children's wellbeing is taken very seriously in france in my experience.

DeepanKrispanEven · 11/12/2016 12:05

Wow. "Richard Black" has some major issues. It would be laughable if it wasn't for the harm he and people do by spreading this nonsense to gullible and vulnerable people.

Spero · 11/12/2016 12:15

The mothers who contacted me about Gena and her caravan said they had got the local police involved and apparently they are now making complaints to Interpol about child trafficking, as there is some issue about mothers being asked/compelled to hand over money on arrival in France.

I haven't heard anything more about that but no doubt my contacts will let me know if anything interesting blows up.

I am trying to get journalists interested because Hemming is playing his game via the media and I would like some responsible media outlet in this country to take an interest. No one will.

Even Community Care have simply ignored me. I have raised it via email and in person directly with one of their journalists at a conference. You might think it was worthy of some discussion but apparently not.

Leanback · 11/12/2016 13:09

I think the days of investigative journalism are dead to be honest. Is a real shame.

OlennasWimple · 11/12/2016 14:11

That email is almost full house on conspiracy theory bingo

I went on a Common Purpose course once: no solicitors on it, the only person I'm still in touch with from it is someone I knew beforehand. It was an average, occasionally mediocre, management training event. Either the brainwashing was so sly that I am completely unaware that I'm a puppet of a worldwide underground organisation, or perhaps that is all bullshit....

Spero · 11/12/2016 14:24

And of course, what these idiot conspiracy muppets don't notice is the Children and Families Act 2014 which set a statutory time limit on care proceedings to 26 weeks, which courts are taking VERY seriously as they are all under the cosh to keep their 'stats' looking good.

Some courts are even boasting they have an 18 week turn around.

Have a think about that. 18 weeks from issue to final hearing means you effectively have only about 12 weeks to engage with a local authority until they have to finalise their care plan and make a decision about whether they will support your child coming home or being permanently placed elsewhere.

That is the kind of really quite chilling and sobering timescale that these idiots should be campaigning about. Instead they continue to promote utterly false and misleading information about care proceedings being deliberately dragged out to make money.

And what was Hemming, at the time a serving MP doing when CFA was being debated in Parliament? O yes, getting pissed and trolling people on mumsnet.

Leanback · 11/12/2016 15:26

The irony there Spero is that many frontline workers don't feel 26 weeks is enough time at all.

MagicChanges · 11/12/2016 18:43

Dear god Spero who IS this Richard Black bloke - he's seriously unhinged. Makes Hemming look the essence of sweet reason. Where is he publishing this crap? Do you feel personally threatened by him?

Spero · 11/12/2016 21:32

The first email was headed 'to a primitive neanderthal Sarah P'
It then said NO WONDER YOU ARE STILL MISS, YOU ARE SO FUCKING UGLY, LOOKING MORE LIKE AN ALCOHOLIC DRUGGED UP MAN THAN A WOMAN! GET LOST YOU PATHETIC CHILDLESS FREAK, YOU ARE NO WOMAN!

I emailed him to say if he carried on like that I would have no hesitation in taking action against him so he replied to say "You are just a silly poor beggar that will pay for her stupidity! I know that you haven't got the money and the knowledge either!"

Then two quite threatening comments were left on the CPR blog by someone using another name, all on the same day.

I was urged to report it and the police were really good. It was actually quite a sobering experience as I didn't think they would take it seriously and I wasn't going to bother but I was advised to report it in case it escalated. Thankfully I haven't received anything similar since but someone has just popped up on Twitter asking for my phone number to 'discuss issues' !

So it is all a bit alarming. I get that people are very angry and upset but this kind of abuse is not helping anyone.

Spero · 11/12/2016 21:34

It's so sad and so common that men seem to be abusive to women based on whether or not they find them sexually attractive. What that has to do with anything I don't know....

But on a happier note, its quite nice to be back in the days of the (nearly) 1,000 posts care proceedings thread!