Girl, 14, forced to become pregnant with donor sperm bought by mother

[ariadneoliver]

Words fail on this.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/28/girl-forced-pregnant-donor-semen?CMP=twt_gu

[TheRealFellatio]

And the sad thing is that those children will now end up in the care system. This woman sounds a bit deranged to be honest.

[Lilka]

I heard that this happened years ago but the judgement was only made public now, so perhaps the mother is already out of prison.

Reading that story made me feel physically sick. Poor poor girl :( I hope she and the baby are getting on okay now. As an adoptive mother, I find stories of adoptive parents abusing their children make me feel so disgusted on a level other abuse stories often don't make me feel. Perhaps because I know from being an adoptive parent, how much our children deserve after their starts in life - the best parenting you can possibly give. The trust involved in adopting a child as well - from SS, any other countries involved, the child, everybody. The idea of taking a child who has already been abandonned and abused, and hurting them further...it's beyond my comprehension :(

[phantomnamechanger]

"if I do this ? maybe she will love me more".

bloody hell, poor child :(
completely speechless at the thought of any mother doing this

also had no idea you can buy sperm on the internet! That's asking for trouble, surely!

[edam]

Lilka, the story says the adoptive mother is serving a prison sentence - present tense. The story is based on a welfare hearing, not the original court case which was presumably subject to reporting restrictions.

[obi1]

Unbelievable!!

[lydiajones]

So sad, poor girl.

[alcibiades]

I've just read the Family Court judgment: www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed113458.

It's heartbreaking to read, even though written in the formal terms of a court judgment. I had hoped to understand something of that woman's thought processes, but to no avail.

There are two other judgments on that website in respect of this family. In one of them, the matter of the reporting restrictions is dealt with. The judge made an order to last until 2029, when the baby reaches 18 years old. I hope the order lasts that long, because the woman "apparently intends to write a book about how the children were unfairly taken away from her".

[IShallWearMidnight]

re the HE angle and the "need" for inspections - Social services investigated on four separate occasions according to the Guardian article and found no evidence of CP issues. How would inspecting every home Edder have made a difference when they did investigate this particular family?

[Lilka]

alcibiades - Thanks for the link, I much prefer reading court judgements to media reports. Just so awful :(

[TheRealFellatio]

Well in this case clearly it didn't, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't in other cases. Plus if there were two different agencies involved then something untoward would be more likely to be spotted.

[Mumfun]

Unbelievable. I just sometimes dont know how these people can be stopped - so hard to even conceive of what awfulness they might do.

[edam]

alcibiades, thank you for posting the link to the court judgement. I've just read it, open-mouthed in astonishment and horror. Such an unbelievably wicked way to use and abuse your children. Those poor girls - all of them, and the baby boy. I just hope social workers and psychotherapists are helping them and giving A every chance of being a good Mother to her baby (if she wishes to bring him up, of course).

Thank heavens the family friend intervened. Thank heavens the midwives realised something was up. Chilling in the extreme.

[alcibiades]

The home education aspect is, I think, a little bit of a red herring. In this case, the local education authority were involved, but didn't handle that efficiently. From the link I posted, the relevant paragraphs are 99 to 103. If the law were to be changed and all HE families were required to have the equivalent of an Ofsted inspection, that would result in an increase in the cost burden of the local authority while there's no guarantee that abuse cases of this kind would be picked up anyway. As a contrast, there are cases of child abuse that get missed, even when children are attending school regularly.

There were reports to social services from other sources - one was the family's previous GP, and another was from a GP who lived next door to the family. But somebody who can emotionally manipulate her daughter into inseminating herself is likely to be very good at deflecting social workers.

Apologies if this seems to be criticising your views, Fellatio, I don't mean to do that, just that, as Mumfun says: I just sometimes don't know how these people can be stopped. And the sad fact is that no matter what powers (and money) are given to local education departments or to social services departments, there are still going to be abuse cases that get missed. It's a deeply distressing situation.

From one of the other judgments, I gather that the criminal case took place some time in August last year. So that means that the woman will likely be free, but on licence, in just under two years' time. That's not really long enough for the two elder daughters, who are probably suffering from something like the Stockholm Syndrome, to gain a sense of their own self. I do hope that one of the conditions applied to her licence is that she has no contact with her children.

AIBU to hope that this woman gets some sense drummed into her while she's in prison?

[ryanboy]

I am not sure what the HE angle has to do with the case really.I mean how would things have been different if the girl was at school-she would have still told the same lie about the boy and the one night stand

[StealthOfficialCrispTester]

Glad to see child protection in action here for the mother and baby

[StealthOfficialCrispTester]

Do we know that the girl is even keeping the baby? Poor thing - I imagine she neither wants to be a parent so young nor to hand over her baby to adoptive parents. I personally hope that if she does choose to keep her baby she is given support over and above what would normally be given to teenage mums in order that she can come to terms with what has happened to her, cope without her own mum and complete er education.

[AThingInYourLife]

It certainly sounded in the judgement as though the girl wanted to keep her baby after he was born.

I too hope she gets all the support she needs.

Fair play to those midwives for their intervention.

[Sparklymommy]

That is such a sad story on so many levels. 5 years does not seem like a long enough sentence to my mind. I hope the girl is being given all the support she needs moving forward.

[mathanxiety]

the sad fact is that no matter what powers (and money) are given to local education departments or to social services departments, there are still going to be abuse cases that get missed. It's a deeply distressing situation.

Yes but that doesn't mean more powers and more money wouldn't go amiss. The very lax overseeing powers when it comes to HE allow people who are interested in isolating their children from society to do so.

I hope I will not be flamed for this, but there are some bad apples in the HE 'community' who do it for reasons that have more to do with their own problems than for any genuine good for the children involved.

I am not talking about the majority of HE parents here, and I want to make that clear. What I am talking about is a very small subset of HE parents who have paranoia, parents who have extreme fundamentalist religious beliefs, parents who have ego problems, parents who have emotional disturbances of various kinds. HE is sometimes part of a larger pattern of family isolation and child abuse, and that is what it has to do with this case.

Giving HE regulators teeth would result in more of these people being identified and more children protected.

[pinkpaws]

Good god there is a whole lot of crazy out there poor wee girl .

[pinkpaws]

good god there is a whole world of crazy out there.

[pinkpaws]

good god there is a whole world of crazy out there.