Baby girl taken from mother to live with dad and his boyfriend

[Darcey2105]

I'm horrified!! Have you seen this story this morning?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32603514

A baby girl was taken from her mother and is now in sole custody of the dad and his boyfriend. The reason being that he said the baby was conceived to be their surrogate child. but she says he agreed to be her sperm donor so she could have the baby.

What is going on? Surely even if the mother had changed her mind about surrogacy she could still be allowed to keep her own baby. I am totally appalled. The men had a top female lawyer fighting their case. And it looks like it was a woman judge who ruled it was in the baby's best interest to live with the dad and his boyfriend - even though the baby was still breastfeding!!

how can there be so little support of mothers? Please tell me I hallucinated the whole awful story.

It seems very unfair that a judge would go from granting a father six hourly unsupervised visits several times a week and two overnights to only allowing the mother to see her child once a month.

Yup. I have a relative who is a foster-carer who has looked after similar age (and younger) babies, and the birth mothers have 3 or 4 hours of supervised contact every weekday.

Once a month seems designed to substantially break the maternal bond - this child will see almost everyone in her life more often than she will see her mother, and will be very harsh on the child. Children do adapt, but that doesn't mean it's fine to force them into needlessly harsh situations.

Hmm...OP left the thread after three posts.
Come back Darcey I want to know what you made of the sentencing report.

I have coslept and extended bf all mine but that does not mean I can pick fault in the judgement...the woman has form for excluding biological father of other children from the kids' lives by sending them to Romania. She wanted nc with this child's father - note they were happy for her to have contact - and she gets a passport without their permission, registers birth with no discussion on names and has the child baptised, with dad having no input whatsoever.

The decision was fair.

I have spent most of the morning reading this thread and the judgement and not one post on here has made me think the judge was wrong in her decision.

so... do all the people who support the judgement think once a month contact with the mother is a suitable outcome for the child?

Its a difficult question to answer without all the information. What I would say is that one a month contact is pretty low which suggests that the judge must have had significant concerns about the Mother's behaviour being detrimental to the child to limit contact to that extent.

Where does it say monthly?

I can find only reference to both parties needing to discuss frequency, and that initially it must be supervised.

Yes I do agree with whatever the judge has decided regarding contact, M needs to be settled in her new home without S hindering the process and making it any more difficult for M than it should be.

I'm not sure 100% but it seems the child was left in the care of her mother all through the proceedings? If there were any serious concerns about the child's welfare then surely she would have been removed?

Sorry - those were the requests made by the applicant and the Guardian.

"M's guardian has recommended to the court that M is moved to live with the Applicants and should see S once a month for a period of supervised contact."

"The Applicants' case as set out in the final written submissions filed on their behalf was that M should live with them and have contact twice a week with her mother, at least initially. The guardian recommended a change of M's residence to live with the Applicants and that there should be supervised contact with her mother once a month."

"The guardian recommended that M should live with H and B and that her contact with S should be reduced to once a month and that it should be supervised. "

The judgement was

"I shall make Child Arrangement orders in the following terms; M shall live with H and B, by virtue of this order both will have parental responsibility. I will give the parties an opportunity to discuss the frequency of contact; but regret to say that it must be supervised until there is no longer any need."

and

" It should not be so frequent as to lead to any confusion in the child's mind about where and with whom she lives and who are her main carers; nor should it be so infrequent as to lead to distress or anxiety. M is very young and will settle quickly; the role of S will be more peripheral than it has been in the past and its importance and frequency for M will be dependant on its quality; the purpose of time spent with S is to assist M's security, sense of identity and to enhance a settled existence for her. There will be an order setting out the time M is to spend with S"

Still - it is quite an awful suggestion from both the Applicant and the Guardian that it be reduced to once or twice a month contact.

Hopefully she will see her more than that.

As has been pointed out, the judge didn't actually specify once a month - she left it to the parties to discuss with a view to enshrining the final arrangements in the court's order. She didn't specify a minimum amount of contact, but I assume the starting point for discussions would be once a month as that is what the guardian advised. If the father had suggested anything else, it would be completely open to the mother to take it back to court, but there is no reason to think he would - on the contrary, before and apparently during the hearing he was prepared to offer more.

That part of the judgment is very carefully thought through, and quite illuminating. The judge was concerned that the mother was likely to cause conflict around contact and that that wasn't in the child's best interests. She referred to the fact that the mother had previously done that, by filming handovers, accosting the partner's mother and using every device she could to frustrate contact. The judge also referred to the worry about a Romanian passport. She made it clear that she had struggled with the supervision requirement but said she felt it was necessary "to reduce conflict and enhance the likelihood of contact being a positive experience for M". She went on to say "It is intended that a regime of supervised contact should not continue for long but that once M is settled and living with the Applicants the parties will be able to reach their own agreement and arrangements over contact which was always the intention of H and B". She specifically stated that contact should not be "so infrequent as to lead to distress and anxiety... the purpose of time spent with S is to assist M's security, sense of identtiy and to enhance a settled existence for her."

^Still - it is quite an awful suggestion from both the Applicant and the Guardian that it be reduced to once or twice a month contact."

Where do you get that about the applicant from, Fanjo? Your own quote indicates that the applicant was suggesting twice a week.

I'm just going to clap SoupDragon for being the voice of reason on this thread.

Anyone who ACTUALLY reads the judgement cannot think this was wrong.

That's a singularly heartless remark Ici

No, it isn't. It's the reality of the situation brought about by this mother.

I notice you ignore the rest of my post as to the issue of the desirability of a parenting mode which entailed the child being attached to the mother 24 hours a day. And about the views of the guardian who knew much more about everyone concerned than you do.

Completely wrong Fanjo. The Guardian reduced from what the applicant suggested. READ PEOPLE.

Sorry but I do still worry and struggle with the following

"At present S is able to care for M well physically but there are already grounds for concerns about her mother's over emotional and highly involved role in this infant's life. Ultimately the role of a parent is to help the child to become independent. This is a child who at 15 months old is still carried by her mother in a sling on her body. M spends most of her time with her mother who does not set out any timetable for returning to work, as S would have to, to provide for M and for herself. There is a potential for enmeshment and stifling attachment rather than a healthy outward looking approach to the child's life. The question is who benefits most from this chosen regime which points towards an inability to put the child's needs before her mother's need or desire for closeness."

I find this whole attitude odd. By citing sling wearing and not returning to work they are making an issue of those two things regarding a child's independence. There are thousands of families (Mothers) who do the same with their children.

I KNOW that there is an 'All day' line but I would seriously want to question what they mean by 'all day'.

Cheese are you a pom pom waver or a sergeant major?

READ PEOPLE.

What mode of discourse is that, exactly?

"Where do you get that about the applicant from, Fanjo? Your own quote indicates that the applicant was suggesting twice a week."

sorry my mistake.

I think it is odd then that the Guardian wished to reduce it so significantly.

The mother submitted that she would agree to the father having the child twice a week (overnight), the father then proposed that it be the other way around - that HE have the child and the mother have her twice a week.

It's a real shame there was no better solution - like joint custody.

There are thousands of families (Mothers) who do the same with their children.

But not in combination with using spurious visits to medical settings in order to frustrate contact orders, and not with a past history of sending children out of the country to live with strangers in order to keep them away from their father.

Courts weigh evidence in its totality, and are concerned only with the matter they are dealing with. This isn't a seminar on parenting in general, nor is it a research project; it's about the particular child and the particular parents in front of the court. It's disingenuous to pick up one point which in context is felt to be of significance and then claim that a broader point is being made about other people who aren't under consideration.

Sergent Major Buxhoeveden.

It frustrates me when people comment without reading full facts.

I think I have read the facts and the stuff here so much I am getting all jumbled in my brain!

I still think reducing the mother to non-resident parent and twice weekly supervised visits is tragic, but I do understand that there is a real abduction fear.

I think the breastfeeding / sling stuff is dangerous stuff to be throwing about in a law court.

I think that deciding to breast feed for 'about nine months' then continuing longer is a pretty normal thing to do and not necessarily a ploy to restrict contact.

and so on...

But I do apologise for the Once a month thing - that was my doing and I can see that's wholly false.

Probably going to be slated for this, but I'm going to post my thoughts anyway.

The gagging order was not temporarily in place before judgement. It is still there after the judgement. If the woman says something libellous or untrue surely she could be sent to court, fined or imprisoned. Can you really have a report released publicly like that and be unable to comment on it? And the father's boyfriend has been given joint parental responsibility although he is not related, in a civil partnership or married to the child's father. Considering the judge supposedly didn't treat it as a surrogacy, would this be usual? Is it usual for boyfriend or girlfriend of one parent to get parental responsibility against the wishes of another parent? Indeed if it had been treated as a surrogacy case the mother can change her mind to hand over the baby, I believe, even when using another's egg which is not the case here.

Nurturing elements being castigated as potentially unhealthy is annoying. Mother is described variously as duplicitous, agitated, hostile and manipulative but then she was faced with having her baby taken away from her. If she is unsuitable as a mother, why didn't welfare take the baby from her before, independently of a tug of war case? If it was solely in the interest of the child.

If she is homophobic, why aren't the children of homophobes routinely taken from them if it's deemed a reason to be unfit to parent? The DUP have MLA'S in Northern Ireland and potentially MP'S who are homophobic. A lot of the DUP are members of the free presbyterian church who take this stuff as biblical. Should their children be taken off them? Didn't Iris Robinson say in parliament that homosexuality and sodomy were more vile than abusing children. I'm sure there are many others, but it is less acceptable in Britain to come out with this stuff publicly. If someone hears a parent uttering homophobic statements, should they report it to social services for the sake of the children? If it is one of the reasons to take this woman's child off her, it should apply to everyone.

Also, the lauding of the mother of the father's partner (but not in law) as a grandmother (although neither legally or biologically) to the baby.

I'm so glad nobody took me to court after I had my baby. I did extended breastfeeding. Was a sahm. The wronged child regularly ended up in my bed, teddy in tow. Oh and my parents are both deceased so had no grandparents my side, so obviously others with grandparents would have made a much better family. I held him an inordinate amount of the time as he was happiest in arms. I'm still incredibly involved in his life a decade later. How he copes away from me in school, I don't know as my parenting has obviously damned him to a life not of emotional assurance as I was aiming for, but dependency according to this judge. Yes, it has hit a nerve, as I did all the things this judge damns. And I did them in the interests of a happy and healthy child.

I find parts of the report quite subjective and think some of the reasons this woman's parenting is deemed potentially harmful are dodgy. If the father and his partner had the child from birth and were open to the same scrutiny, maybe they could have been deemed rubbish by someone with an alternative view of parenting. Who knows? Park the surrogacy 'contract' for the child. The mother changed her mind and kept her biological child as she was entitled to do. I really don't see what part the father's boyfriend plays in this now. Other than as voluntarily supporting the biological father. Has the father's boyfriend been given a status in the child's life as if the surrogacy had gone ahead, flouting the mother's wishes?

Maybe the father will provide a better home, and is lucky to apparently have the support of his partner (but not in law) and the partner's extended family.
The child will probably have more life chances as the father appears to have more resources and support. Maybe that was in the mix.

Pangurban, have you read namechange's excellent post, just above yours?

Can you really have a report released publicly like that and be unable to comment on it?

I think it's to protect the child and so is entirely reasonable.

the father's boyfriend has been given joint parental responsibility although he is not related, in a civil partnership or married to the child's father. Considering the judge supposedly didn't treat it as a surrogacy, would this be usual? Is it usual for boyfriend or girlfriend of one parent to get parental responsibility against the wishes of another parent?

I agree that this is very odd. Do all three have PR. I guess there are reasons to do with the boyfriend maybe needing to be there if the child is ill or needs medical attention but neither parent is available?

Mother is described variously as duplicitous, agitated, hostile and manipulative but then she was faced with having her baby taken away from her. If she is unsuitable as a mother, why didn't welfare take the baby from her before, independently of a tug of war case? Yes, I agree this is strange.

I find parts of the report quite subjective and think some of the reasons this woman's parenting is deemed potentially harmful are dodgy. If the father and his partner had the child from birth and were open to the same scrutiny, maybe they could have been deemed rubbish by someone with an alternative view of parenting. Who knows?

yes.

I do get tired of people on this thread, and child protection threads, picking out isolated factors and doing a dramatic, 'there but for the grace of god go I' posturing. Nobody is getting their kids taken off them for breastfeeding, or co-sleeping, or not having grandparents fgs. Just as people don't get their kids taken off them for sleeping on a mattress, or having a messy home. None of these things in isolation will get your kid taken off you, and social services don't trawl round proactively to see who's good enough to parent (unless you're applying to adopt).

This child's situation is in crisis, in breakdown, and that is why the courts have become involved. There are a wide range of factors involved, but the key one is that the child is being prevented from having a relationship with her father, and that IS serious.