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.

Thanks for the link Catz, I am at point 205. The child had never eaten solid food yet the doctor recommended taking away his fortified formula and replacing it with standard in an attempt to get him to eat. That seems very risky practice indeed and the boy should have been monitored extremely closely. The possible side-effects of this should also have been explained to and understood by the parents. Unbelieveable!

You have no idea what my daughter will think or feel in the future. Some adopted children seek out their birth parents, some don't. What is most important is the here and now and the trauma, short and long term, that being taken away from me and her daddy would cause her.

No-one is saying that the facts should be hidden from the children, the information can be given to them sensitively as and when they are able to understand.

MNetters on this thread are saying that the children should be removed from their new families and returned to people they have not had contact with for over 5 years. They are not thinking in the best interests of the children - thank God the appeal court judges did.

Is there some sort of procedure for this? There ought to be some means of access for both sets of parents.

But Ella your daughter will no doubt be told she was abandoned, will these children be told their parents were wanted them and fought for them for years, I suspect not.
You simply cannot compare this with your own situation, it's so far removed it's not funny.
In the child's interest is banded around a lot, but what about the parents, they are people too or do they not count for anything ?

Re: the social services- was this actually a case of social workers messing up? Wasn't it doctors? I got the impression from teh transcript that they were in a similar situation to us: took child to A&E and a doctor got suspicious when unable to diagnose. So why is it turning into a discussion of social workers? Were they involved? Was it their fault?

Btw one of those much-maligned health visitor stood up for the parents in court. Good on her!

Frankly though, this doesn't seem to me to be one of those appalling cases of misdiagnosis (like Dr Southall or dd's consultant). Scurvy is rare and by the sounds of it this was an unusual case of scurvy.

'They are not thinking in the best interests of the children - thank God the appeal court judges did. '

Are they? Because you don't know anymore than I do what they'll want in the future.

And again I pose the question: as one mother to another, can you in good conscience go to sleep at night knowing that child has a biological parent out there who lost them through a miscarriage of justice and keep that, and those parents, from that child?

Because I find that morally abhorrent. I really and truly do.

What sorrento said, basically.

What about the child's right to know the truth?

"You simply cannot compare this with your own situation, it's so far removed it's not funny".

Is anyone suggesting this is funny, Sorrento?? I'm making the comparison because you and others are suggesting a 5 and a half year old child (that's how old the youngest child is) be removed from the people he thinks of and loves as his parents. And I'm asking (in vain) that people try to imagine the reality of doing this - and therefore using my daughter as an example.

The child's interests take precedence over that of the birth parents AND adoptive parents and rightly so.

I'm a lawyer for the parents and family members, blueshoes, not for the LA. I'm guessing litchick does the same job, hence my comment earlier in the thread.

It is not my experience that our local courts disregard the advocates for the parents, or restrict the involvement of additional experts. But certainly the documentation is invariably voluminous and, as you will know well if you are a litigator of any sort, brief summaries of a case very rarely do it justice.

My belief is that the system works pretty well, though the legal aid reforms will prevent that from being the case for much longer as the current crop of experienced advocates are not being replaced by people of equal ability.

Those outside the system struggle to understand how truly hopeless some parents can be amd how detailed the scrutiny is that is given to each case, IMO.

I haven't read the link to the judgment given above, off to do that now.

The case doesn't seem that black and white to me. Scurvy or not, "it is not in dispute that the child had at least 6 fractures" (point 83). Fractures (especially fractures of the long bones) don't just occur. There has to be some kind of explanation for them.

And quite honestly, what type of parent allows a child to get Scurvy?

And the child's interest are they don't know the truth? That they wait till they are 18 and find out, if they are not deceived from the get go? And then seek out and find out the real story?

You know yourself, how it feels for a mother to lose her child through no will of her own.

I do NOT understand a mother who does not feel that and cannot spare a thought for another mother who had gone though that.

My SIL was adopted from foster care.

Pretty clear cut case of neglect - her mother was a well known junk-addicted prostitute.

She was eventually adopted by my ILs, and kinder, more lovely people one would be hard-pressed to find.

But they did their untold best to make their daughter know all of who she was.

They'd have been more than willing for SIL to have contact with her biological mother, but unfortunately she died of an OD when SIL was 9.

but ellabella, how is it so traumatic to remove children from adoptive parents that it can never be contemplated, but OK to remove children from birth parents?

Of course children can and should be removed from cruel and abusive parents of all types, whatever the genetic relationship. But where it later emerges that that removal was wrong, do you not see that banging on about how removal is so traumatic it can't possibly be an option is ridiculous?

Kids in LA care are shifted from pillar to post all the time. That's accepted - although I guess most people would say it was wrong, or damaging. It's very strange how removal only seems to be such a huge shibboleth when it might mean reunited children with parents who loved them, did nothing wrong, and have suffered a terrible injustice.

I'm not arguing, of course, that the children should just be torn away from the adoptive parents with no preparation. Or even, necessarily, that they should leave the adoptive parents. But some form of contact between the birth parents and their children MUST be possible.

reuniting

Read most of the thread but hopefully I'm not rehashing anything.

This is ny no means the first time I have heard of this happening - and given that the families aren't allowed to talk about it the fact that I know there have been other cases like this implies that there are probably more.

SS have a very difficult job to do and a fine line to tread - as being wrong in either direction has catastrophic consequences - but they have to make these decisions under tight time constraints and heavy workloads etc.

the thing that bothers me with these cases is that in a lot of them the children seem to have been put up for adoption very quickly and the adoption has been pushed through as quickly as possible even though there are appeals happening. In one case the parents missed it by something ridiculous like a couple of weeks - oh yes you're innocent but too late the adoption has happened.

Loads of children are in other types of care in this country - and while adoption is seen as the best option long term recent reports on BBC have been suggesting that decent care in other environments can be excellent.

So why the hurry to get the children adopted, when it is permanent, and SS know that there are appeals?

Why not wait to do something as final as adoption until the appeals have finished.

I know it can take a few years - but the consequence for parents of being found innocent and not being able to have their children back anyway is just the most horrific thing I can think of.

I think if my children were taken from me tum and I had to choose whether they were adopted or put in a home, even I would choose adoption.
I was talking to a man who works in a children's home at the gym and the kids he looks after are very damaged. I cannot imagine my children leaving their lovely middle class home and being put in one of those places with children who've been abused or are abusers, they be eaten alive.

I did say decent care in other environments. Fostering is surely an option as well.

If my child was taken away and I knew I had done nothing wrong I would not agree for her to be put up for adoption while I was still fighting to have her returned.

You might as well not bother fighting at all if that's the case. Maybe that's why it happens - to try to stop the appeals.

These children will know that they have been adopted. They probably have some form of contact with their birth parents. Don't jump to conclusions.

Sorry Grammaticus was that for me?

Adoption is irreversible, as far as I know, why do it while the parents are still in the legal process to keep the children. Seems odd.

"If my child was taken away and I knew I had done nothing wrong I would not agree for her to be put up for adoption while I was still fighting to have her returned."

Judging from the court transcript, the Websters did not agree:

"Judge Barham made care orders in relation to all three children. He also freed the children for adoption and in that respect dispensed with the consent of the parents."

I think this is sad but something that none of us can possibly comment on because none of us know the facts. children are seldom taken from there parents for no reason and I think there are things that the professionals and the parents know that we as general public dont.

tumtum: "the thing that bothers me with these cases is that in a lot of them the children seem to have been put up for adoption very quickly and the adoption has been pushed through as quickly as possible even though there are appeals happening. In one case the parents missed it by something ridiculous like a couple of weeks - oh yes you're innocent but too late the adoption has happened."

You raised a very valid point which has also been troubling me. There seemed to have been an unholy rush to get the children adopted. My understanding is that an adoption order severs all ties with the birth parents, because the adoptive parents are from that point onwards regarded as the rightful legal parents. In fact, counsel for the local authority argued that the parents did not even have legal standing to contest the adoption order, so final was the severance. Adoption is the perfect way to slam the door on birth parents, better still after 3 years ...

At the back of mind, there are allegations of social services 'baby snatching' to meet adoption targets. Most adoptive parents want babies and younger children, they are the easiest to adopt and most likely to make successful adoptees. The Webster's children were 1, 2 and 3 at the time this case came to the attention of social services.

Coincidence maybe, but the children are without doubt perfect adoption fodder ... Maybe things might have been different if they were older.

'I know it can take a few years - but the consequence for parents of being found innocent and not being able to have their children back anyway is just the most horrific thing I can think of. '

Exactly! Both these parents AND these children have suffered the death of the other, whilst the other is still alive.

And any mother or father, no matter how they came about that, who is blind to that and those feelings and hides behind 'it's in the child's best interest' in order to pursue their own course has no right being a parent at all and should be well-ashamed.

And aware that those sentiments will come back to haunt them.

NO ONE belongs to anyone else.

But he/she is mine. Nope. Don't make the mistake of believing that even of your own flesh and blood you gave birth to.

Just look at my mother's and my relationship for proof of that.

You have children with the knowledge that they're their own person.

student, that's one of the saddest things about this and similar cases. That even when the parents have been cleared, people will still cast aspersions.

FGS, these poor people have had three children torn out of their lives, fought through the courts and been told to bog off, because they don't exist as parents any more - and yet people are STILL kicking them when they are down. Nice.

It's the old no smoke without fire crap, wake up people, innocents go to jail in 2008, loose their children, the system fails sometimes and if I hear one more person say if you're innocent you've nothing to fear (of the police, of national databases, of ID cards) I swear I will shake them.