terribly sad story about wrongful adoption where the birth parents have been proved innocent

[edam]

Today programme look at 2hrs 10mins in this morning had a segment on the case of parents who were accused of abuse, their children were taken away and adopted. Now it's finally emerged that the parents are innocent but the Court of Appeal says the adoption order is permanent and can't be overturned.

I do understand that adoption has to be solid and safe but surely the courts and social services could promote some form of contact between innocent parents and their children?

In what universe does the 'best interests of the child' = refusing to recognise and address a miscarriage of justice? Surely the child has a human right to a relationship with their birth family?

Just makes me even more fearful of SS after the stream of stories about miscarriages of justice and heavy-handed tactics. I would NEVER ask them for help.

Stewie, not sure who the two people are, but I certainly posted that I disagree with Cote on that particular point.

I don't think adoptive families are second best. Many of them are very very good, parenting in difficult and challenging circumstances, as they have to pick up the pieces.

That is why this is so hard.

But I don't think adoption is necessarily all or nothing, or that finality is the best way for it to work in all circumstances. There must be flexibility built into the system, and can be on a very exceptional basis which I feel miscarriages of justice fall within.

"I believe it (adoptive families) is at best a second best.." sadly Stewie, some people do beleive that, theres no point challenging people who beleive this its ingrained.

They can't beleive that for some children adoption is not " a primal wound" but the way they found their family and they feel no compulsion to to search for birth family. Other children do feel that hole all their lives and no amount of sympathetic paretning can heal it for them.

Sometimes this is down to the history of the child prior to adoption, sometimes the personality of the child, sometimes the way the adoptive parents handle the information they have.

People who make sweeping statements about adoption are the kind of people I try to teach DS to deal with or avoid.

Why is everyone so sure what the adoptive paretns are going to do? Have I missed a commetn from them in this lenghty thread?

Kew, if you are asking about how we got the info that the Websters' adoptive parents are withholding contact, it is Ella's post at 00:10:

"According to an "exclusive" interview the Websters gave to the Daily Mail the adoptive parents aren't at the moment allowing contact. Mark Webster said "Perhaps it would be easier if the adoptive parents would work with us in some way over contact but they won?t".

And who can blame them when the Websters are now talking about taking this to the European Court despite the Appeal Court judge moreorless telling them it would be futile."

thanks - were they all adopted into the same family or different ones? Have any of the adoptive paretns commented at all? I'm guessing not.

Kew, I believe the 2 older children are with one family and the 3rd is with another. So the siblings are split up.

I would be interested to hear what the adoptive parents have to say too, particularly as to their reasons for withholding contact, if that is in fact true.

I don't know any parents who have with-held contact where it is available and deemed safe so I can;t really comment.

In their position I would be terrifed, traumatised and more than a little shell-shocked. I think its way too soon to be interpreting anything the adoptive parents might be doing. They are facing losing what they thought was perfectly legitimately their family and are now facing ECHR instead.

"In their position I would be terrifed, traumatised and more than a little shell-shocked".

Me, too. And concerned about the well-being of the little girl I have spent the past 3 and a bit years making feel safe, secure and loved.

BTW with regards to contact (and not related to the Websters but might be of interest); although we adopted our DD from China we had to attend a preparation course run by our local social services. One of the SWs was telling us that they were having problems with an adoptive couple who were refusing to send photos of their child to its birth father.

Why's that? I asked.
SW: Because he's in prison.
Ella: What's he in prison for?
SW: Assaulting the child.
Ella: Well I can understand them not wanting to send photos of the child if he harmed him/her.
SW: But he was on drugs at the time. He deserves a second chance.
Ella:

FriarKexcumber has a good point. If we accept that the Websters were shellshocked at the time of the first judgment, then I think we have to accept that the adoptive parents are going through something very similar now.

They need time and support and counselling, just as the Websters do. There is really no difference in that part of their situation.

True, cory, kew.

If the Websters were shellshocked and beaten down into thinking that their parenting was crap (afterall their son suffered fractures they have no way of explaining), their confidence could have been restored when they won the fight to keep their 4th son.

And now they want their first 3 children back in the light of new medical evidence and are able to fight for something they should have done many years ago.

Bear in mind that once the fractures were diagnosed, they lost their 3 children to care within less than a week. What parent, assuming they were innocent, would not be shellshocked?

And there was an adoptive mum who came to talk about the sibling group she and her DH had adopted. The older girl had had problems settling in and had been quite disruptive - little wonder given how neglected she'd been previously. However, a few days after the adoption order had been finalised (by which time she'd been living with her new parents for several months) she and her mum were out on a drive; mum said to her "X I've noticed that since we went to court you seem so much more relaxed" to which X replied "I feel safe now".

Clearly the finality of the adoption order and the permenance of her new family gave her the security she needed. You can't take that away from adopted kids.

The mum also showed us the letters she sends to the birth father twice a year. They were very, warm friendly letters telling him about the children. According to the Daily Mail the Websters receive reports from the adoptive parents.

Perhaps if they stopped their fruitless endeavour to disrupt the new families they would be willing to facilitate some contact IF they felt their children WANTED to and would benefit from it. However, at the moment they must feel frightened and vulnerable and, unlike the Websters, they have no access to Legal Aid.

ella, I disagree the Websters' endeavours are 'fruitless'. There could be merit in them which the ECHR would have to decide. You cannot silence people who are trying to exercise their rights deprived through a miscarriage of justice and make it a condition of contact that they do not pursue those rights. That is holding them to ransom.

How about the adoptive families looking at it in another way. Rather than avoiding the birth parents, how about meeting with them, without the children, and work out what is the best way to resolve the situation sensitively in the children's best interests??

The best way to force someone to take the legal route is to refuse to compromise or negotiate.

But, what no-one will answer, what if the adoptive parents think it is not in their kids' best interest to meet their birth parents? What if the kids don't want to meet them?

The 10 year old might be terrified that her birth parents are trying to take her away from her family.

I will answer.

Adoptive parents do not own the children. Neither do the birth parents before their children were removed. The adoptive parents' views on the children's interests are important as are the children's views, if they are old enough to express them properly. The court can and routinely expresses a view on the interests of children whilst taking everyone's views into account and balancing all competing interests, including those of the birth parents, if they had their children unfairly removed.

Adoptive parents' views are not the end all or be all. No more final than my dh's view of what is in MY best interests anyway.

So if the kids don't want to see their birth parents, you'd do what?

Find out why, tell the birth parents. It could be as simple as the child does not know who they are and frightened that these strangers would take them away. 2 of the Websters' children were 1 and 2 at the time they were removed and may not have any memory of their birth parents.

It then falls to their adoptive parents to explain why their birth parents want contact. If the children are not old enough to understand, to try to explain to the birth parents to say look at things in a year's time or say they can see the older child but not the younger one.

There are lots of permutations, which if both sides take an open and sensible attitude, can work out a reasonable compromise outside of legal rights.

If you read the Court of Appeal judgment, the Websters are not completely unreasonable. For a long time, they conceded that their children were best left with the adoptive parents. If the Websters' changed their mind, it behoves the adoptive parents to try to understand the situation more.

It is the same as in a divorce, between the residential parent and the other parent. And how children are sometimes have to maintain contact with parents, the reasons for which they may not completely understand. But which the adults can work together sensitively to make it a positive experience for the child.

Ella, bear in mind that even where older children, say 9 or 10, express a view, a family court does not always take that as the end all or be all of what is in that child's interests. One mnetter, who had her daughter removed into long term foster care, still cannot have get her back despite her daughter being abused in foster care and asking repeatedly to go back to her birth mother.

Same in a divorce. Children do not decide which parent they want to rstay with.

Not saying this is right or wrong. But it is a fact that young children are open to coaching and manipulation and can be made to say, even believe, things just by the power of suggestion.

If I wanted to, I can scare my 5 year old into believing that certain people are nasty and want to hurt her, even if there was absolutely no basis for this. Not saying the adoptive parents would do that. But that is just one reason why the courts do not necessarily listen (rightly or wrongly) to just what the children want.

maybe they will do all of that. Maybe at the moment they are just scared. They don't have the pres behind them, maybe they are scared to raise their heads at the moment.

Sad situation.

Even sadder, it makes me glad I chose not to adopt in the Uk where it seems that people will never see my child as ever "really" mine. And that should a birth parent ever appear and want the child back that it would be in the best interests of my child to return whatever their age.

Where in all of this have the birth parents been proven innocent?

First of all their lawyers put forward a defence of brittle bone disease (which is very often claimed in cases like this, despite being extremely rare). That failed, so they suggested that the kid had scurvy and found an expert to back it up.

None of this proves innocence.

And the sad thing is, Kew, that should the laws protecting the finality of adoption orders be amended, then this will have an effect on the 4000 adoptions that occur in the UK each year. Parents will be too scared to commit emotionally to children that could be removed from them.

well-reasoned and sensible posts, blueshoes.

Exactly, Lenin! As our definition of what constitutes a family expands, why can situations like this, between two sets of parents, not be accommodated in law as well as in life?

Many people grow up with two mummies, two daddies, no mummy or daddy, grandparents as parents, lone parents, blended families and four parents, etc.

And in such instances, tolerance and understanding are exercised. People who shout, 'It's not in the best interest of the child to have a lone parent, gay/lesbian parent, step-parents, etc.' are shouted down for the narrow-minded ignoramuses they are.

So why can't this case be looked at in a similar fashion? The paradigm is already there.

The definition of family is fluid, it's not black and white, it can even change over time (as parents' partners come and go, for example).

Expat I think that would be absolutely fine if that is how the care had been arranged in the first place. Suddenly changing it at this point is very different. I really do think that adoption would change radically if we are going to say that actually it is not for the new parents to decide what is happening to their children (and contact can be very very disruptive) but an outside party. I think many people thinking about adoption would decide against it, and that would leave a lot of very very vulnerable children in homes or moved around foster care, or remaining in unsafe situations which would have to be the worst outcome of this case. I agree that this case is very sad, and that there may well have been and continue to be a miscarriage of justice for the birth parents. However law is rarely made on exceptions, and in this case a change in law not in interpretation is required. If the Websters are going to try a Human Rights approach, I imagine that the adoptive parents could do the same, should the children be removed from them, as they too have a right to family life.

If I were the Websters, nooka, I couldn't sit back and smile anymore than any adoptive parent could.

We don't tell people wrongfully put in prison, 'Oh, too bad. We made a mistake. Sucks to be you. Hope you get out soon.'

So why apply the same to the biologicaly parents - Oh, this is all very sad, but you know, 3 years have gone by. That's a bummer we fucked up, but you're never going to be allowed to see your kids again. Sorry?

I mean, if it were YOU this happened to, would YOU be content to let it lie?