Real Fathers for Justice - News

Missing girl from Manchester spotted in Toronto

Fri, 3 Sep 2010 09:22:56 +0000

2 September 2010
BBC News

Pearl Rose Gavaghan Da Massa, Pearl Da Massa may now be known as Belle Flaherty

A six-year-old girl who was taken abroad illegally by her mother has been spotted in Canada, police have said.

Pearl Da Massa was taken from Manchester almost two years ago by her mother, Helen Gavaghan, despite her father having joint custody.

The pair have now been spotted in Toronto and are thought to have changed their name to Flaherty.

Police in Greater Manchester and Toronto are now appealing for Pearl's safe return.

Officers said Ms Gavaghan flew to Cancun, Mexico, on 9 December 2008 under her new identity with Pearl.

They stayed at various places in Mexico and crossed into Texas on 30 December.
Helen Gavaghan Helen Gavaghan flew to Mexico on 9 December 2008

In February this year, police discovered Ms Gavaghan had been living in Toronto for about 12 months under the name of Dana Flaherty and Pearl under the name of Belle Flaherty.

It is believed they had been staying at an address in the Parkdale area of Toronto.

Ms Gavaghan is described as 5ft 5in (1.6m) and of very slim or thin build.

She has green/brown eyes and had long black hair, which may now be dyed and/or cut short.

She is described as having prominent angular nose and wide ears.

Pearl is described as having normal build with green/brown eyes and was last seen with light brown shoulder-length hair.

Det Insp Colin Larkin, based at South Manchester CID, said: "It is almost two years since Pearl's father and the rest of her family and friends have seen Pearl and Helen and it is impossible to imagine what they have been through during that time.

"Our aim is to make sure that Pearl is safe and well and is reunited with the rest of her family.

"Helen's parents, who have also not seen their daughter and granddaughter for nearly two years are also keen for Helen and Pearl to return to the UK.

"I appeal directly to Helen to contact police and also, if anyone has information about her whereabouts please contact Greater Manchester Police or Toronto Police."

Help find missing Pearl website

Rffj demand public inquiry

Wed, 1 Sep 2010 18:47:52 +0000

Rffj demand public inquiry into the case of social worker coercion of child to implicate an innocent parent.

Last month the Scotsman reported a case where a father was implicated in sickening allegations that could've seen him jailed for several years, the allegations turned out to be a total fabrication by his former partner. >Link to item<

Rather worryingly, further investigations by police uncovered a series of emails from the mother's legal team, her lawyer had asserted that should she invent allegations against her former partner the case would go her way.

What happened next was mother made statements implicating the father, making several wild allegations of sexual abuse, she allowed their daughter to be subjected to a series of intrusive examinations and intensive questioning by police and social workers.

The girl, who was 5 years old at the time of questioning, consistently denied any wrong doing by her father, under court scrutiny the judge said the methods used during questioning were flawed and amounted to coercion, he ordered that social worker Tracey Black be removed from child protection duties and the police officers retrained.

Rffj spokesman Mike Kelly said
"The sickening actions of the mother in the case are deplorable, attempting to separate the child from her father and to have him imprisoned by fabricating sexual abuse"

"The fact that both the police and social workers broke all the rules, attempting to get the child to back up these sick allegations, highlights how badly the system operates"

"The experiences both father and child have been subjected for two years, could be described as everyone's worst nightmare"

"This woman does not deserve the loving title of mother, she should be charged with child cruelty and wasting police time"

"We understand from press reports social worker Tracey Black has been removed from the case, however she is still working in child protection despite the ruling, we can ascertain from that social workers consider themselves above the law and immune from Sheriff's court rulings"

"One of the policeman in question asked to be removed from duties that involve child protection in the future, we think social worker Tracey Black is a disgrace to the profession and should do the same"

"We call for a public inquiry into how the case was handled so lessons can be learnt"

"False allegations are rife in family courts, prejudices, bad practice and downright incompetence seem to be the norm"

"Cases like this do very little to strengthen confidence in neither the legal system nor the professionals involved"

Rffj have written to Msp Elizabeth Smith asking for progress, further to her comments in the Scotsman calling for an inquiry. >Click for link< unsurprisingly she has failed to respond to us.

You can write to Ms Smith here: Elizabeth.Smith.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

She defied the law to find her mother

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:14:56 +0000

Winona Varney was reunited with her mother through Facebook, writes Christopher Booker.
Telegraph
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:25PM BST 21 Aug 2010

For once, after all the shocking stories I have reported on the secretive system that allows social workers to seize children from loving parents for no good reason, to send them for adoption, I can at last report a story where a family torn apart for nine years has been reunited.

When Winona Varney, now a pretty 16-year-old, recently fell into the arms of her mother Tracey at Truro railway station, they had not seen each other since she was seven. During that time, she and her 12-year-old sister Daniella have been living unhappily with an adoptive family, who repeatedly told them that their mother was a bad woman who did not love or want them. But when, in June, Winona managed to track her mother down, via Facebook, a short time later the two girls and their mother were again living under the same roof.

This harrowing story began back in 1997, when social workers from Cornwall county council received a wholly erroneous tip-off that there might be drugs in the house where Tracey lived with her partner. The day after the birth of their first child, a boy, they were made to sign an agreement that they would �work with social services�. Tracey then had two daughters, Winona and Daniella; but their father, who had been in care himself, had a strong aversion to social workers and eventually threatened one with violence.

On the social workers� insistence, in order to keep her children, Tracey left her partner. She and they were sent to a mother and child unit in Staffordshire, where she often had to protect them from abuse by other inmates. Eventually, though there was no evidence that Tracey had harmed them in any way, the girls were sent for adoption, on the grounds that they were �at risk of emotional abuse�. They were taken in by a couple in a nearby Cornish village, and Winona was given a new name. (Their brother, however, was returned to his mother, after a year in foster care.)

Year after year, unaware of her daughters� whereabouts, Tracey sent loving birthday and Christmas cards to them. But this could only be done through social services � who never passed them on. According to Winona, she and her sister were constantly told both by social workers and their adoptive parents that their mother was �a horrible person� who didn�t love them.

Tracey eventually found a new partner with whom she had two more daughters. In June this year, Winona managed to track down her mother through Facebook, and they arranged to meet at Truro station. They couldn�t believe their happiness at being reunited and more secret meetings followed.

When Daniella was told what was going on, she was initially wary, because of the lies she had been told about her mother. But twice the girls escaped at night through windows for further meetings, until eventually Winona rang the adoptive parents to say they were both going back to live with their mother.

Winona is so angry about what has been done to them that she has opened a page on Facebook entitled �Anti-Social Services Forced Adoption � We Can Help!�, to join up with other children in the same plight. She pays tribute to the advice she was given by Ian Josephs, the businessman living in the South of France who, through his Forced Adoption website, has helped hundreds of families who have fallen into the clutches of this corrupt and secretive system.

Not dissimilar was the case of Tammy Coulter, taken away from her mother by Derbyshire social workers when she was only seven months old, after an accident left her with a bruised cheek. After time in foster care, she was put out for adoption by a judge who said that, thanks to delays by the social workers, she and her mother would by now be strangers. Only after 17 years did she find her mother again through the website Genes Reunited, and was able to return happily to her birth family.

In 2006, Tammy told a London audience, which included judges, lawyers and Harriet Harman MP: �Finding out you�ve been adopted is one of the worst feelings in the world, because you feel that all of your identity, everything you�ve known about yourself, is a lie.� She said she was speaking out �on behalf of children and parents who have also been through the secrecy of family courts and the injustices that have taken place, and the devastation of one decision that determines the future of a child�.

After nine years of misery, Winona Varney would agree. She says that after going to college, she wants to get involved in child care � �but certainly not as a social worker, because I have seen what they can do�.

New counselling service for Rffj members

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:19:57 +0000

Rffj are pleased to now be able to offer free counselling sessions to subscribing members.

Assisting the Rffj team is experienced Psychotherapist and Counsellor Adrian, he is accredited with the Bacp and has a diploma in counselling, he uses the Bacp ethical framework to counselling, (More info on Bacp site)

Members seeking a referral initially can have a brief discussion with our counsellor to find out how we can help, and decide the best way forward.

Adrian writes about the new service;

�My offer to help members comes from personal experiences of family law, dealing with similar issues as those who find their way to Rffj�

�I understand the pain and loss of separation and how important it is to be able manage these very powerful emotions�

�Counselling is not about receiving advice; if you need practical help and advice on family law matters you are better of contacting the Rffj helpline headed by Ray Barry� (more info on advice service)

�People coming through the counselling experience will feel better about themselves, have greater self-esteem, increased resilience to difficult circumstances, understand their own feelings better and appreciate the feelings of those around them. They will feel more secure and be able to identify goals. They will be empowered with 'tools' to help them achieve these goals.�

�I will be able to offer two time slots for telephone counselling, these are Tuesday and Thursday evenings between 6 and 8pm, if enough people are in need of this kind of support I would also like to set up a therapy group�

Our counselling service is strictly for paid up members only, to request a referral email info@realfathersforjustice.org

To join or to donate Rffj visit our homepage and see the links for secure payments through googlecheckout

Parents win legal battle to name doctor who accused them of child abuse

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:10:23 +0000

A couple cleared of injuring their baby son have won a legal battle to identify the doctor who gave evidence against them.

Telegraph
By Patrick Sawer
Published: 8:15AM BST 22 Aug 2010

When Victoria and Jake Ward saw their baby son crying and refusing to feed, they took him to their doctor. When the cause of his pain could not be found, they took him back twice more.

The professional couple were shocked to be told eventually that William had a broken leg. But the drama turned into a nightmare when they were accused of having deliberately harmed their little boy.

Arrested, charged by police and threatened with having their child taken away by Cambridgeshire county council's social workers, it took two years for the Wards to clear their name.

Yet even after the criminal case collapsed for lack of evidence and a family court finally decided that the parents posed no threat to their son, the couple were astonished to find that the names of the doctors who had given evidence against them were kept secret.

Only now, three years later, have the Wards managed to draw a line under the affair by forcing the name of the key expert witness to be made public.

He was Karl Johnson, an eminent radiologist who specialises in non-accidental injuries and has acted a police witness in several cases of child abuse.

Mr Johnson, who is chairman of the British Society of Paediatric Radiology and works as a consultant at Birmingham Children's Hospital, told police that in his view William had suffered repeated fractures and had a history of being abused.

The case against the Wards also relied on the view of Dr David Vickers, a community paediatrician, that if no obvious explanation could be found for an injury then child abuse was likely.

The outcome of the case, in a landmark High Court judgement, has helped to lift the secrecy surrounding England's family courts, where campaigners claim that a lack of openness creates an environment in which miscarriages of justice can go unnoticed.

The family's nightmare began one night in July 2005 when, at three months old, William woke up in pain. He refused to feed and the next day Mrs Ward took him to see her GP.

The GP was unable to identify the cause of William's pain, but on returning home the Wards noticed his leg was swollen.

Determined to establish what was wrong they returned twice to the GP, but he was still unable to offer any diagnosis.

The Wards took their son to Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge, where an x-ray revealed he was suffering from a spiral fracture of the lower right leg, an extremely rare condition in children who have not yet begun to walk.

Because William's parents were unable to explain the fracture the hospital deemed the case suspicious and called in social services.

Further X-rays revealed what appeared to be three more fractures and an injury to his arm. This appeared to be strong evidence that William had been abused several times in his short life.

Mrs Ward, who at the time worked as a manager for child care strategy for Cambridgeshire, told BBC One's Panorama, in a documentary to be broadcast tomorrow night: "We were absolutely shocked.

"It was a nightmare which seemed to be spiralling out of control."

The Wards were only allowed to take William home with them when they agreed to be supervised 24 hours a day by Mr Ward's parents, who had to relocate from Devon to move into the couple's home.

The deal meant they could never be alone with their own son out of concern that they would cause him further harm.

The Wards were arrested and questioned by police on suspicion of grievous bodily harm and child cruelty towards William. On being released on bail they were immediately suspended from their jobs.

A week later William was placed on the council's child protection register.

With no help from outside agencies their couple mounted their own investigation into the cause of their son's injuries. Filming William asleep at night they discovered he moved vigorously during his sleep, repeatedly kicking his legs.

This led them to suspect that he may have caught his right leg between the bars of his cot and the mattress of their own bed, causing him to fracture it as he struggled to pull it clear.

Detectives removed the cot for examination. In the meantime Cambridgeshire applied to the family court for a care order, allowing them to remove William from his parents.

It soon became clear that both the police and social services were relying heavily on the evidence of Dr Johnson, who said that William had suffered four fractures which had taken place on at least two or more separate occasions.

However, in September 2006 the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed with the case after detectives said they were unable to prove who had harmed the baby.

Naturally the Wards hoped social services would follow suit, but they were in for a shock.

Over the next 10 months the Wards were visited by at least three expert witnesses who had been asked by the judge to give their opinions.

By the time the two-week family court hearing began, Mrs Ward was pregnant with her second child and feared that if William was taken, her new baby would be too.

But during the family court proceedings serious doubts were cast on Dr Johnson's evidence by other medical experts.

His claim that William had suffered four fractures on at least two occasions was contradicted by their assertion that he had only two fractures, both of which had probably been caused at the same time.

Furthermore, Professor Tim David, an expert paediatrician, told the court that in this and many other cases, police and social workers were wrong to assume that an unexplained injury could normally be attributed to child abuse.

Judge Isobel Plumstead finally concluded that Mr and Mrs Ward presented no threat to William, declaring in her judgement: "There is no cogent evidence that these parents injured their son."

The Wards subsequently won a legal fight in the High Court for the judgement to be made public. However, the identities of the expert witnesses in the case remained shrouded in secrecy.

Angry that parents like themselves could be put through such an ordeal without being able to challenge the credibility of experts called to give evidence against them, the Wards returned to the High Court.

Lord Justice Munby agreed with their request and in a landmark judgement in January this year ruled that expert witnesses in family courts could now be named.

In the last week of the last Parliamentary session the judgement was rubber stamped into law.

Mrs Ward, 36, who now has three children and runs yoga and massage classes for babies, said they were not content with simply winning their own case.

She said: "How could we celebrate that someone has decided you didn't hurt your child when you know all along you didn't?

"There seems to be a small group of expert witnesses who often condemn parents. We wanted to be able to name expert witnesses in order to help all those other families who are going through what we went through."

Gordon Jeyes, director of children's services at Cambridgeshire county council until this year, defended his department's decision to press ahead with its application to remove William from his parents' care.

He said: "It was a clear cut case in that there was no immediate explanation and the parents were not clear how the baby had come by his injuries.

"Unfortunately the job of social workers is to think the unthinkable because sometimes terrible things happen.

"It was felt that it was a matter of such complexity and range of opinion that it was a matter for court determination."

Mr Johnson and Dr Vickers declined to comment.

The agony of being a part-time dad

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:17:29 +0000

William Leith - Times
Last updated August 21 2010 12:01AM

Writer Louis de Berni�res has spoken about the pain seeing his children part-time. William Leith knows how he feels

I remember the weekends. Going to pick my son up on a Saturday morning. I remember walking down the drive of the house where my son lived, where my ex lived, where I had lived. The anxious moments on the doorstep. The sudden, terrifying thought that I might have come at the wrong time, or on the wrong day. I always wondered how my voice would sound. When I spoke it sounded shaky and weird � not like my voice at all.

And then I would hear Billy�s voice. My son! There was always a rush of emotion, a balloon expanding in my chest. As a father, when you are separated from your child, you feel vulnerable, even if you see him a lot. It�s the separation. It�s the sense of not belonging. You stand on the doorstep, and you hear your son�s voice, and you feel two things, the tremendous rush of love for your son existing inside the hollow pang of separation. The door opens. Now you must say something. It�s not surprising that your voice sounds weird.

You collect your son�s things. You keep it simple. You talk about Crocs, wellies. Does he need his waterproof? That�s fine � you have a spare one. I was always buying clothes for him. That�s what you do, when you�re a single father at a loose end. You buy spare clothes for your kid. You worry if you�re spoiling him. Maybe you are. Maybe you shouldn�t get him these hoodies and T-shirts. But then you realise: they are not presents for him, really. Who are they for?
I remember the moments when I walked back up the drive, holding my son�s hand, holding the bag with his weekend things. This is what it�s like for the weekend dad. You�re acutely aware that you�re taking him out of his real life, or his main life, to spend some time with you. You�re aware that you might focus your attention on him all the time you are together, more intensely than you might if you saw him all the time. You�re aware that, even if he loves his dad, he might not always want to step into his dad�s life at this precise moment. At the top of the drive, you turn and wave to his mum. She waves back. You are acutely aware that he will miss his mum.

But you�re cheerful. You are a master of jollity. You ask your son what he�s been doing. Sometimes he�s grumpy. But you haven�t seen him for a while, so you don�t mind his grumpiness. You love his grumpiness. Sometimes, when he�s not with you, you wake up in the morning and think of his grumpy face, and you have a pang just thinking about it; there are times when you�d give anything for a look at his grumpy face. And then you realise that you wouldn�t be like this if you saw him all the time � you wouldn�t be like this at all.

Sometimes you marvel at things you read. Like the dad who says he chucks away almost all the artwork that his children give him. But he sees his kids all the time. Huh. Well, you think: I�m not like that. As a single dad, you keep everything. Those finger-paintings that looked like trees. The first efforts at writing words. My son�s first written word was �pie�. At least, that was the first word he wrote for me.

There are lots of other details. Like, is it OK to give your son a haircut? Or is that the prerogative of the custodial parent? Are there things that you are doing differently � are you and his mum coming from the same place when it comes to the big issues � God, death and so on? How worried should you be about what he eats? As a single father, you understand that you can be over-anxious. When he belts along the pavement on his tricycle, do you worry too much? �He won�t graze his knee on my watch.� That�s your attitude. You know it�s wrong. But you can�t help it.

That was my life for 18 months. Then I started seeing my son�s mum again. Now everything feels different. I�m more relaxed. The difference is that I don�t feel separate any more. I don�t feel like I�m taking my son away from his life every so often to spend some time in mine. It�s the separation. That�s why I�m not surprised at the way the writer Louis de Berni�res feels. He is separated from his two young children and their mum. He sees them, he says, every other weekend. He feels desperate, he says. I can understand why.

There�s something I haven�t mentioned yet. De Berni�res hasn�t mentioned it either. Few single dads want to talk about it. But it�s there, in your head, all the time. The stepfather. That�s something you have to face up to, at least in your mind. It didn�t happen to me. But, as a single father, it�s always there. What are the statistics? Trust me: don�t try to find out. Unless you get back together, certain things will probably happen. Your ex will find another partner. And your kids will see that guy more than they see you. And they might start thinking of him as their new dad.

This is where men are more vulnerable than women. I�ve talked to guys about this. The single dad�s girlfriend is usually just that � a girlfriend. But the mum�s boyfriend often becomes the kids� de facto dad. And the guys I�ve talked to: well, they were in pain. They didn�t know what to think about the stepfathers in their life. They didn�t know what they wanted them to be � they didn�t want them to be wonderful dads, for instance. But they didn�t want them to be bad dads, either.

And that�s partly what you�re thinking about as you walk down the street, holding your son�s hand, ready for the weekend. You�re not just thinking about dinosaurs and spaceships. You�re walking along, checking out every guy walking in the opposite direction. That guy there: he�s taller than you. He looks well dressed, too. Is it him? That guy with the shaved head? The one with the beard? It plays on your mind.

In the end, it was none of those guys. In the end, things worked out. And I have to say, my experience as a single dad was better than almost any I�ve heard. But the thing is: men, in this area of life, are vulnerable. It makes you think about women, and how vulnerable they are in other ways. It makes you think about a lot of things. It preys on your mind. I�m glad it�s over.

Louis de Berni�res 55, writer

�The worst thing, practically, was finding the house so quiet, because it was always so full of laughter and rampaging and stampeding.

�The emotional desolation is hard to describe. There were many times when I felt suicidal. We�ve got to drop this sentimental Victorian idea of motherhood that we seem to have, which is that somebody brings up the children and somebody else pays for it. It�s just not remotely right or fair. We�ve got to overturn this idea about the sacredness of motherhood, as if being a mother gives you the divine right to own the children and it�s up to you to decide how you share them out. That�s just got to stop.

�Fathers should have the same rights as a mother. It should be assumed automatically that there will be shared parenting, basically equal parenting, unless there�s a damn good reason not to.�

Louis de Berni�res was interviewed for the journal of Families Need Fathers (fnf.org.uk)

Bob Geldof, 58, activist

�I can hardly read the literature on family law without feeling an awful sadness and profound rage.

�In the near future the family law under which we endure will be seen as barbaric, criminally damaging, abusive, neglectful, harmful to society, the family, the parents and the children in whose name it purports to act. It is beyond scrutiny or criticism and, like a secret society, its members � the judges, lawyers, social and child �care� agencies � protect each other�s backs.

�The court is entirely informed by outdated social engineering models and contemporary attitudes rather than fact, precedent rather than common sense and modish unproven nostrums rather than present-day realities. It is a disgraceful mess.

�Dangling at the other end of this are the lives of thousands of British children and their families.

�To remove a child from their father (in the hugely vast majority of cases), their grandparents and other family, their school and friends is wholly destructive to a child and its family. How much longer must we put up with the state-sanctioned kidnap of our most vulnerable?�

From Bob Geldof�s foreword to a 2009 report by The Custody Minefield

Dougray Scott, 44, actor

�I�d like to put the people who made up this legal system against the wall and shoot them. That�s my basic reaction to what I�ve been through. Whether emotionally or in terms of what access you get to children, or on a financial level, I think it�s disgusting, and lots of men will tell you that.

�I would like to see my children more often than I do.The irony is that in most sections of society we have a misogyny, which is wrong. In terms of the legal system it goes the other way, against men. It�s a very unjust system that needs a violent change in terms of the way that fathers are treated when divorces happen. It�s tragic from the mother�s point of view and the father�s. It doesn�t benefit the parents and it certainly doesn�t benefit the children. It�s wrong and we need a huge overhaul of the system. Being away from my kids is tough.�

�Five hours was never enough�

Peter Pojuner Divorced father of two
�When you have children, the centre of your world changes. To have them taken away from you is incredibly painful and disorientating. I look at the world in a different way now. Lots of things have been tarnished. I�ve found it difficult to meet someone else and to trust another person. But my relationship with my children is fantastic now, and that�s the most important thing.�

Stuart Young, 40, Single father of one
�When my son was a baby he would stop crying the minute he was in my arms. It was the greatest experience of my life, having him in my world. Then suddenly the house was empty and I was on my own. I was only allowed two hours with him, twice a week. But I was never allowed to see him at Christmas, or on his birthday.He is now living with me full time. I�m delighted, but I do feel that a child needs both parents in his/her life. My son is the best thing that has ever happened to me and I�ll do the best I can for him.�

Calum Chase, 52, Divorced father of one
�We would sit eating ice creams on Brighton pier and I�d be close to despair. I had the contact I was supposed to have, five hours on a Sunday. But it was nowhere near enough. In the end the judge decided that there should be overnights � I saw my daughter on alternate weekends. It was bittersweet. Putting your child to bed and being there when she wakes up is such a special experience, especially when it�s been denied for many years. But on the other hand I don�t see her for two weeks on the go. It is, however, a huge improvement. My daughter is 9 now, and we�re in a good place. We don�t see her enough but she knows that her dad loves her without limits.�

High Court backs boy who rejected father

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:10:29 +0000

Judge Bellamy said that the case raised serious issues about children who had become "alienated" from a parent

Independent
By Terri Judd
Thursday, 12 August 2010

A schoolboy who was told by a judge that he must live with the father he claimed to hate yesterday succeeded in forcing the High Court to reverse its decision.

The 12-year-old boy, who can only be named as S, won the long court battle after Judge Clifford Bellamy said that "by consent of all parties" the boy should continue to live with his mother.

However in a written ruling yesterday the judge added: "On July 21 2010 a wholly deserving father left my court in tears having been driven to abandon his battle to implement an order which I had made on January 4 2010 that his son, S, now aged 12, should move to live with him."

The child had been transferred to foster care in mid-March to begin "introductory meetings" before moving in with his 43-year-old father at the end of the month but during each visit, the boy put his head in his lap, put his fingers in his ears, and refused to eat and drink.

His court guardian described the meeting as "extremely difficult", adding: "S did not look at his father and had his head down for the whole time. I spoke to S after his father had left and he was feeling numb but 'good'. He said to say thank you and said that this was not the end and he would think about seeing his father after his GCSEs.

"I am sure he listened to his father and it was S who volunteered that this was not the end and he would see his father on his terms when he was ready. Overall S managed the situation very well, but sadly we could hear his father sobbing as he left."

The parents, who are both professionals, had married in 1996 and separated the following June before the boy was born.

The father made his first application for contact immediately, which included holidays, but the visits ended in 2006.

"Over the next four years immense energy and resources were invested in trying to reinstate a meaningful relationship between father and son. Those efforts failed. That led to my order transferring residence from mother to father," the judge said.

His decision was later upheld by the Court of Appeal, which rejected a challenge by the mother.

But after the difficult visits in March this year, the boy's social worker recommended he return to his 42-year-old mother in the Midlands and the father agreed on the understanding that more work was needed before he could move in.

However, by the following month Warwickshire County Council and the boy's guardian had become so concerned about his mental health that they said they believed that attempts to transfer him to the care of his father should be abandoned and he reluctantly agreed that he would have no direct contact with his child, only access to photographs and school reports, unless the boy requested it.

In his ruling Judge Bellamy said that the case raised serious issues about children who had become "alienated" from a parent. "There is a clear need for further debate and research in this area."

"The parents and the guardian agreed that S has suffered significant emotional harm as a result of the parents' failure to secure for him a full and normal relationship with his father and paternal family and as a result of the high level of parental tension and conflict since proceedings were first issued in June 1999," he said.

He added he had no doubt the father's decision not to seek implementation of the residence order made on January 4 "will have been a very painful decision for him to take".

"However, after all that has happened in the six months since my order of January 4, I have no doubt that the decision was the right decision for S. I warmly commend the father for it."

Need help and advice on your case? Please read the info below before you contact us.

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:40:08 +0000

Rffj are a UK based campaign group, fighting for the rights of children and parents to be able to have and maintain their relationships after parental separation or divorce.

We get many enquiries from those suffering at the hands of the legal system, many who are in need of practical advice but perhaps are not in a position to get involved with our campaigning.

Due to the volume of enquiries, Rffj set up a support service in March 2010, headed by our media spokesman Ray Barry, ably assisted by member John Ison and a dedicated back up team.

The Real Fathers For Justice campaign group is funded solely from donations.

To continue the campaign, we need your support, please consider subscribing as a member or making a donation to support the advice line. You can contribute via Googlecheckout secure payments links on our homepage

Ray Barry writes about his experiences heading the service.

"We have been running the advice service for four months now."

"The volume of enquiries has been increasing to ray@realfathersforjustice.org and we are now receiving at least four or five hundred emails and calls every month."

"We provide a free initial advice service for the enquiries, this is based on my 8 years experience of advising litigants in family law cases. For those who need further help, we offer a professional Mckenzie Friend service at very competitive rates."

"We have no source of funding for the campaign group or the free initial service; this makes it very difficult to keep it going, we feel it is very important to continue and urge all that contact us to make a contribution" (see the google checkout secure payment links halfway down our homepage)

"I remember when I first encountered divorce papers coming through the post, and cold impersonal proposals from my wife�s solicitor about my future relationship with my children, I felt outraged, but I also felt out of my depth. I had never had any dealings with courts or solicitors before."
"Even when I instructed my own solicitor I never felt confident in them. I never felt they were telling me the whole story. I very much felt the need for the kind of support service we are now trying to provide � frank, honest advice from people who have experienced it for themselves and who are motivated to guide others through it. "

"I think one of the reasons the helpline has become so popular since we launched it is because, while we understand and deplore the injustice of what has happened to enquirers, we advise on what practical steps can be taken to improve the enquirer�s own case."

"Whilst we encourage contributions to help us survive and continue, they are not compulsory, we think it is fair to give priority to subscribing Rffj members and those who donate, so for a quick response include your donation receipt in the email"

"The advice service has an email address and a phone number: ray@realfathersforjustice.org and if it�s an emergency 07905 502856"

"We can give much better advice if you send us an email rather than phone us"

When you email please include:
� The ages of your children
� Whether you were married to the mother and if not whether you are named on the children�s birth certificates
� An outline of the problem and what you want to achieve
� Whether there are any court proceedings or previous court orders, or contact agreements
� Anything else which you think is relevant, and if you have donated paste a copy of your receipt.

"This kind of information will enable us to focus on what could be done to improve your situation."

"Both John Ison and myself have campaigned for years with the original F4j group. We moved over to Rffj as we felt the group was more inclusive of members views and offered a deeper understanding of the issues we face as parents. John was F4J�s media spokesman, and I was the Religious Affairs spokesman. "

"John has recently graduated with a law degree, and you can see my CV on >this link< "

"While we try to help people work their way through the Family Law system, at heart we are both still campaigners, and wish more than anything else to see this evil, abusive system completely dismantled and reformed, starting with a legal presumption of shared care where both parents are fit."

Type of case we deal with:
The most common enquiry is from a father who is being denied contact with his children. This can take many forms:
� A contact order is in place but the mother is not complying with it,
� Mother has taken the children and is refusing all contact until the father obtains a court order
� Contact was agreed informally without a court order, but the arrangement is starting to fall apart
� Court proceedings are under way to obtain a court order, but it is likely to be a long process, and contact is being denied in the interim.

"A lot of enquiries are from women: sisters, paternal grandmothers or new partners of fathers seeking help on their behalf."

"Sometimes the enquiry is from a mother who is being prevented from seeing her children, and we help mothers in this situation the same as we help fathers. It�s our view that no parent should be unreasonably denied a full role in raising their children."

"We advise most people who are applying for contact or residence orders not to use a solicitor. Act in person. It�s not rocket science. Apart from saving money, there are positive benefits to acting in person:"
� The judge will pick up a lot of information about you from seeing how you conduct yourself in court, which he would never get if you are sitting silently behind your solicitor.
� No solicitor will ever understand the detail of your case better than you do.
� When you instruct a law firm, your case is often allocated to a junior, over-worked solicitor. It is common to hear complaints about solicitors not returning phone calls, forgetting to do things, agreeing to do things and then being too busy to do them, and long delays in doing things. When you act in person, you eliminate such problems.

Ray Barry

Telegraph - Family court system could implode

Sun, 8 Aug 2010 12:09:20 +0000

The Telegraph have published a series of articles of interest to us this weekend, mainly about the problems in public family law;

Link to source
We must protect children from their protectors

Link to source
Family court system could implode, warns its top judge

Link to source
Council branded 'barbaric' by family of man wrongly taken by social workers

Link to source
Britain's forced adoptions: the hidden scandal we can't ignore

Our social workers normally hit the headlines when some Baby P-type horror story comes to light, showing how they failed to intervene when a child was so maltreated by its parents that it died.

By Christopher Booker
07 Aug 2010

What don't usually make the news, however, are the hundreds of cases when the social workers' failure is the very opposite: where, aided by police and courts, they seem determined to remove children from responsible parents, to consign them to an often miserable life with foster carers or to adoption.

Having examined many such cases in recent months, some in exhaustive detail, and spoken to experts who are deeply disturbed by what is going on, I have no hesitation in describing this as one of the worst hidden scandals in Britain today.
It is clear that the child protection system created under the Children's Act 1989 has gone horrifyingly off the rails, leading one High Court judge recently to compare it to the kind of thing which went on in 'Stalin's Russia or Mao's China'.

Two general aspects of this system failure are particularly shocking, One is the callous disregard the system shows for both parents and children in failing to uphold the central principle it was set up to protect: the interests of the children.

The other is how the system is shrouded in such secrecy that its workings remain almost entirely concealed from public view.

What is remarkable is how consistently this system displays the same fundamental flaws. From the moment social workers intrude into their lives, the parents find themselves treated like criminals, plunged into a Kafka underworld.

When their children are seized, on suspicions which too often turn out to be unfounded, this is almost invariably with full support from the police. When one mother was recently breast-feeding her newborn baby at 3 o'clock in the morning, no fewer than nine police officers and social workers entered the hospital room to wrest the baby from her.

The parents then find themselves caught up in a court system which seems almost entirely geared to taking their children away. There seems no one outside the system they can turn to. The judges seem predisposed against them, Even their own lawyers can seem as much part of the system as those acting for the other side. When independent experts wish to put their case, their evidence is often ignored.

As parliamentary figures show, the number of applications for care orders averages around 8,000 a year. Of these only between 0.1 and 0.2 per cent are refused.

Often just as evident as the distress of the parents is that of the children, who find themselves placed in the care of strangers for reasons they cannot understand. Where 'contact' is allowed with parents this is ruthlessly supervised by the social workers, so that if a mother speaks 'inappropriately', as by showing any sign of affection to her child, the contact may be instantly terminated.

All this appears to be in flagrant breach of the original Act, which purports to put the interests of the children first, not least in prescribing that wherever possible if they are taken from their parents they should be kept with their siblings � as so often they are not � or placed with relatives.

Yet Parliamentary figures show that only in one per cent of cases are children placed with 'kinship carers' � whereas in Denmark the figure is 45 per cent.

Part of why social workers seem so zealous in seizing children on the flimsiest of evidence is that until recently councils were given ambitious 'adoption targets' by central government, rewarded with funds running into millions a year. Huge sums of public money are still available to fund this system. Social worker-approved foster carers can receive up to �400 a week for each child, and not a few social workers are foster carers themselves.

Almost as alarming, however, is the way the system manages to blanket its operations in such secrecy. Nominally to protect the interests of the children, it is forbidden to report anything which goes on in court or which might identify them. But this often goes so much further, as when social workers instruct parents that they must not talk about their case to any outsiders, that the secrecy seems designed to protect not so much the children as the system itself.

Ian Josephs, a businessman based in the South of France, first became concerned about this issue when he was a county councillor and has helped hundreds of distressed families through his Forced Adoption website. High on his list of recommendations as to how the system could be reformed is that parents who find themselves victims of the system should no longer be gagged from speaking to outsiders.

There should be an end to Britain's system of 'forced adoption', almost unique in Europe. Instead of judges deciding behind closed doors, parents should be allowed to put their case to a jury. Contacts between parents and children should no longer be controlled by social workers but by a judge.

Family courts should no longer be allowed to accept mere 'hearsay' evidence, Social workers should no longer be allowed to snatch children simply on vague suspicions that they might suffer 'emotional harm'. Finally, the courts should no longer be allowed to exclude evidence from independent experts just because this might challenge the social workers' case.

With these reforms, says Mr Josephs, much of the rampant injustice of this system might be removed. Since Parliament gave social workers such extraordinary power over other people's lives, politicians have by and large stepped away from the hideous abuse of that power which has resulted, Only the politicians can now get this tragically corrupted system back on the rails

Media runs for cover at mention of 'family law'

Fri, 6 Aug 2010 17:14:19 +0000

Irish Times

The in camera rule was never intended to shield the legal system from public scrutiny, but that is the result of media�s interpretation of it, writes JOHN WATERS

IMAGINE THAT, sometime in recent days, the following events had occurred: that a garda had broken into a private dwelling and, without being able to display a warrant or court order, seized an infant from its mother�s arms. What if the mother, in the course of this break-in, had sustained an injury? What if the mother and the child were Irish citizens and if the purpose of this operation was so that the child could be despatched to a foreign jurisdiction and forcibly adopted?

Imagine that this distraught mother, on subsequently calling to ask the Irish childcare authorities about her son�s health and welfare, had been told that she had no right to such information. Imagine, finally, that no authority in this jurisdiction had ever expressed the slightest concern about this mother�s capacity to care for her own child?

There are many questions that should properly flow from such a scenario but I have, to begin with, just one: should such a story be considered newsworthy? Does the public have an interest in knowing about it? Yes or no? How, in terms of importance to our democracy, would such a story rank alongside one about, say, the dubious expenses of a public representative?

These events described above occurred in this State within the last week. But because they followed on proceedings in Irish courts which were held in camera, I have a difficulty. These proceedings had many worrying aspects, not least that they were allowed to proceed. But, arising from the interpretation of the law accepted in most media organisations, I risk being censored if I seek to give further details.

My immediate focus, therefore, relates not to the substantive questions raised by this case, but to the fact that the Irish media has decided it cannot be reported. Several journalists are aware of the broad facts, but nothing has been published. This circumstance arises from an extraordinarily narrow interpretation of the meaning and purpose of the in camera rule, which requires that proceedings concerning families and children be held in private.

Editors, reporters and, perhaps most pertinently, lawyers acting for media organisations, tend nowadays to interpret the in camera rule as a blanket ban on all coverage of or commentary upon such cases.

The purpose and intention of the in camera rule is not secrecy for its own sake, however, but the protection of the privacy of families involved in legal proceedings. It was never intended to shield the legal system from public scrutiny, although that is the end result of the media�s approach.

Conventionally, the wording of a court order in respect of the in camera dimension requires that any report of the proceedings should contain no information which would tend to identify minors or family members implicated in the proceedings.

Sometimes, the provision may be broadened to include respondents and/or notice parties. There is no requirement that other facts of the case be withheld from the public, and the standard reference in court orders to �reports� would seem to suggest that some reporting is invited.

Through the evolution of media custom and practice, however, a situation has developed whereby the very mention of �childcare proceedings� or �family law� is enough to have media lawyers and editors running for cover. Even though it is very often abundantly clear that the only purpose being served by a blanket suppression of information is the protection of judges, lawyers, State agencies and professionals, media practitioners continue to impose an interpretation of the in camera rule that implicitly assumes these outcomes to be legitimate.

Such interpretations of the legal situation are grossly inimical to the interests of democracy.

Something deeply ugly is happening at the heart of our society and the manner of its governance in the most intimate areas of human life.

If social workers from a foreign jurisdiction are enabled to run whooping and high-fiving from an Irish courtroom because they have been permitted to snatch the child of a blameless Irish mother, is it not time we asked what is happening?

The media offers the only forum in which such questions can be put. Media practitioners therefore have a sacred duty to take their courage in their hands and shine harsh searchlights on those who are empowered to intervene in the intimate lives of citizens to a close-to-absolute degree.

If we cannot report on such matters, why bother reporting anything?

Does it matter whether the economy functions?

Why should we care who sits in Leinster House?

Whatever happened to �publish and be damned�?

Are we journalists or entertainers?

How seriously do we take our role in democratic society?

Are we concerned with the public consequences of the events we write about, or simply seeking adequately interesting material to fill space and time to shift �product�?

Unless journalists and editors are prepared to address these questions, we may as well pull the blinds down on the enterprise of journalism and leave the protection of our democracy to the bloggers and tweeters, who at least have the excuse of having no responsibility for what happens to human freedom.