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.

this story is like something from the dark ages.
unbelievable.

It's funny how removing children from adoptive parents is so incredibly traumatic it can't even be contemplated. But removing them from their birth parents is fine and apparently dandy.

Edam - agree with you. This story has made me so angry. Unfortunately if it was me, I am afraid that I would have to take the law into my own hands and grab them back .

thingscanonlygetbetter on Thu 12-Feb-09 22:47:20
"Really I don't know how some people can say that the adoptive parents would think of these children as theirs now and would be in 'agony' if they were returned to their birth parents. That would be incredibly selfish IMHO!"

Selfish it may be- but no more selfish than my reaction if somebody had turned up and tried to take my biological two-year-old away for his own good. What you have to understand is that adoptive parents bond with their children in the same way as biological parents do.

And the children bond with them. It would be a dreadful shock for a 3-year-old to be taken away from the only parents he knew. Wanting to protect him from that is not necessarily being incredibly selfish.

The only answer would have been to have avoided this situation in the first place, to have listened to the birth parents when they said there was brittle bone disease in the family, to have done a thorough genetical investigation, calling in the appropriate experts. (I have still not forgiven the consultant who had to be badgered by his junior doctor to even look at dd's test results and then claimed he couldn't understand them anyway as he was not an expert- that apparently left him free to ignore them).

did you ever complain about the consultant, Cory? Guess all your energy was tied up in protecting your dd. But what he did was shocking and downright wrong.

Too busy trying to sort ourselves out, protect her, then get treatment for the condition she actually had, getting the school on board. Also, because he hadn't actually had time to do anything, there was possibly not that much to complain about- just the things he said.

But it was funny- dd was in the rehabilitation clinic a few years later and met a couple of girls who had just come out from hospital and had the same doctor. One had been driven into by a car and gone through the windscreen- he told her off for not being careful. The other one wouldn't say what the doctor had said- but she went round telling the other children in the clinic that there's nothing wrong with you, you're just making it up- which both dd and I thought highly suggestive

Haven't read all posts but have to say to Bonsoir "come off it!". Adoptive parents are not temporary childcarers, they make a legal and emotional lifelong commitment to a child to love and protect him or her. We adopted our DD when she was 12 months old. She is now 4.3, can you imagine us - her MUMMY and DADDY saying - "sorry, darling, but we're not mummy and daddy anymore - you're getting new ones. Off you go!".

Also our Social Worker told us that children are very rarely removed from their birth parents on medical evidence alone. We don't know the whole story about this case.

So many of these cases reflect a problem in dealing with medical evidence - by the judges, juries, SS, police... Few involved will have any decent scientific training.

And Blueshoe's post highlights the problems in taking evidence from just one "expert". Especially, I suppose, if the expert in question is an individual like Roy Meadows or David Southall.

All I could think during that programme was that it's very well them being innocent of actually hitting their kids, but medical opinion now is that the children actually had scurvy. Scurvy ffs, in this day and age! At best they were neglecting their children's diet. Also, as I understood it, the oldest child was 5 and they were taken away and adopted over 2 years ago- ie a lifetime ago for all three.

If I have understood it rightly, the reason for the scurvy was to do with the child's medical problems.

Upwind, you are right about the dangers of rogue practitioners like Meadows and Southall.

Sadly, it does not even take an expert of that ilk to end in disaster for a family. If only one expert is allowed in family court cases and that expert is for all intents and purposes appointed by the council from their panel, that expert will pretty say what the council wants - nothing is black and white and there are sometimes as many interpretations as there are experts.

The expert is beholden to the council to tell the court what the council wants because they get paid everytime they are called to give evidence. Thus they have a financial incentive to keep the council sweet by presenting the medical evidence in support of the council's case ie removing a child. The expert has has a conflict of interest but because the family is not allowed to call medical evidence supporting a conflicting view, the judge just goes with the (council's) expert - child removed.

Edam's point is a very valid one. It is far far easier to remove a child from their natural parents, then it is to return a child from its adoptive parents to its natural parents. It is completely counterintuitive but it happens because of the secrecy with which family courts operate (which means we don't get to hear of routine miscarriages of injustice) and how the family courts operate in terms of how the parents are hamstrung and gagged from the word go.

I repeat - stay away from social services and child protection. Cory, I felt a chill for you. I am really glad you got away ok. You are totally right to act in the way you did. You did the correct thing.

Duchesse - I did not know that supermarket soya milk contains no vitamin C. It seems that the Websters had bad advice.

duchesse - from what I have heard/read the parents were acting on advice from the doctors when they changed the baby's milk. It was the doctor's advice that was wrong, not the parent's actions surely?

Just wanted to point out that I have no experience of social services acting inappropriately. In fact, later on in the sorry saga of dd's disability, when her headteacher was trying to get her labelled a problem case due to her poor attendance record, social workers represented the voice of sanity.

But if the children were old enough to be switched to standard soya milk on medical advice, then presumably they were also old enough to be fed fruit and vegetables in sufficient quantities to sustain health? And if they continued ill, presumably with loosening teeth and cuts and grazes refusing to heal (other symptoms of scurvy), then they would have taken the kids back to the doctor's for more checkups?

The whole thing is a complete mess. Those children and the parents have been let down so badly by the authorities, medical "experts" and the courts.

How do you, as innocent parents, mvoe on with life in this situation? Knowing that you cannot get even contact with your own childrem, children you love and desperately want to look after - I can't comprehend that situation at all. It is just too awful a thought.

And the children - how will they grow up knowing this? Or will they - will their new parents tell them they have a mummy and daddy out there who did not deliberatly hurt them, that it wasn't their fault - and that they should never have been taken away from them?

And the adoptive parents too - what about them? How mixed up must their emotions now be? They have taken on those children as their own. By now they will love them as their own, they will be their children. But to then find out that those children were actually taken away from their biological parents wrongly and should never have been seperated from them - that would be too much to comprehend also.

There can be no winners here. In all this everyone will be hurt and damaged to an extent, either now or in the future and probably both.

To me now there really should be some way those parents can have contact with their children. If they have been shown to have not dleiberately harmed their child - they deserve that contact. And te children deserve that contact - they deserve to know their original mummy and daddy and to know that they didn't hurt them.

duchesse we hear on these boards all the time that children do not need anything more than supermarket milk, provided they are eating well. Now that phrase means different things to different people. The child may have been eating a large quantity of one food group, carbs for instance. Toddlers are notoriously fussy. The Websters may have said that he was indeed eating well and it was up to the G.P to satisfy himself that this was the case.

Not sure why the symptoms of scurvy were not dealt with however.

The toddler with the scurvy had a feeding disorder - hence the soya milk advice.

No mention of any problems with the other children.

Blueshoes - the one expert rule is only a starting point. Parents and other parties can and very often do get leave from the judge to instruct a different expert. Just as they can instruct their own social worker to challenge what the local authority social workers say.

Blueshoes - there is not a blanket one expert rule.
The parents and children all have a lawyer each who can seek leave to get their own.
I've done it hundreds of times.
Judges generally agree because they don't wnat appeals.
And where one expert is onstructed it is 'joint' and all parties get an opportunity to ask questions.

TBH it is often tactical decision to stick to one expert. You want to avoid two or more experts saying the same thing - killer blow to any case.

I think you must be a comrade-in-arms litchick?!

Grammaticus, Litchick, what is your involvement with the family courts? Are you lawyers? If so, for the council or for the families? I am glad that you can enlighten on court procedure and how it works in practice. I only know from what I read.

What do you make of Camilla Cavendish, the Times journalist who has been campaigning for greater transparency and change in the area of family courts and child protection:

Camilla Cavendish - This blind faith in experts fails family justice

"After overturning Angela Cannings's conviction in 2003, Lord Justice Judge declared that no one should ever go to prison again solely on the basis of expert witness evidence. The criminal law was changed as a result. But in family courts, many decisions are still made on the basis of evidence from psychiatrists, psychologists or doctors, who often take the view that a mother is unstable, sometimes without cross-examination. Too many family courts are being run by experts, rather than judges.

If the courts are not prepared to challenge ?expert? evidence, they should surely allow others to do so. In theory, experts are supposed to be independent professionals who have a duty to help the court to come to the right decision. In practice they are often hired guns, paid by local authorities that choose people they know will be a ?safe pair of hands? - people they have used time and time again."

Cory - how terrible.

yes, edam, it is wrong.

Does anyone know how old the older kids are? I would've thought that they, as they must surely remember their birth parents and know they're adopted, should also have a say in this case...