The SUNDAY TELEGRAPH by: Christopher BOOKER 11-Oct-09
Adoption system is UK's shameful secret
Britain is the only country in Europe where children are routinely removed from their parents without consent, says Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:08PM BST 10 Oct 2009
This week I return to one of the most disturbing stories this column has ever reported. It began on a morning in April 2007 when the home of a respectable middle-class family in Sussex was overrun by 18 policemen and two RSPCA officials, supposedly looking for guns. When the father, a professional dog breeder, volubly protested, he and his pregnant wife were arrested and handcuffed, to the horror of their watching five-year old daughter (whom I call, for legal reasons, "Jenny").
East Sussex social workers were then called to remove the little girl. Her mother had a miscarriage while in custody and returned to an empty home, left in chaos. Jenny has remained in foster care ever since, and despite her parents pleading for her return through 74 legal hearings, the ruling by a family court judge last March that she be put out for adoption was upheld in July by the Appeal Court.
Having now seen further documents relating to this saga, I can understand why the family's GP wrote that in 33 years as a doctor he had never come across "such an appalling case of injustice". The first document was her parents' careful chronology of every step in the story, including transcriptions of many of their telephone conversations and meetings with Jenny, invariably under strict surveillance by social workers or the foster carer.
The dominant impression from these recordings is of Jenny's desperation to be reunited with her parents, and of an increasingly distraught child who cannot understand what has been done to her. The parents claim that pressure was put on her constantly to say that she didn't want to see them again. Why did the family court judge not allow this evidence to be heard in court, although she did admit accounts of these "contacts" by the social workers?
A second document is the judgment by Mr Justice Bodey in the Appeal Court confirming that Jenny must be put out for adoption. No evidence had been produced that her parents ever caused Jenny physical or mental harm. His ruling centred on two points. One was evidence that her home was a mess on the day of the raid, although those who knew the house well testify that it was normally clean and tidy. The other was that, when the family's home was invaded by 18 policemen (a figure confirmed by one policeman in evidence), the father verbally abused them in colourful fashion (but didn't attack them physically). Are these really adequate grounds for tearing a child and her parents permanently apart?
A third document is the book Forced Abduction by Ian Josephs, a businessman who has taken an active interest in the removal of children from their parents by social workers ever since he was a Tory county councillor in the 1960s. He acted in part of the Jenny case as a "Mackenzie friend", that is, an informal assistant and adviser.
Mr Josephs shows that Britain is almost the only country in Europe which routinely allows children to be separated from parents without their consent. Indeed, he reproduces a press release put out in 2003 by Hammersmith & Fulham Council boasting how, under a Local Public Service Agreement, it had received a reward of £500,000 from central government for hitting its target of 101 adoptions in the year. This particular, highly controversial scheme of cash bonuses has, thankfully, since been abandoned.
The impression given by these documents supports the GP's view that this is an "appalling case of injustice". Social workers, lawyers and judges seem enmeshed in a system heavily skewed towards putting children out for adoption – by a process so shrouded in secrecy that it seems designed more to protect the system itself than the interests of the child. Most alarming of all is that there seems no one with the authority to intervene in cases such as Jenny's, where that system appears to have left both a loving family and justice horribly betrayed.
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Comments: 9
What is the difference between a Rottweiler and a social worker?
You will get your child back from a Rottweiler.
The Hitler's Nazis had the brown shirts and the SS to do their dirty works. Brittan and Australia now have the RSPCA. No government would do this as it would be political suicide so they get a "well respected" "caring charity" to do it for them. The World is becomming fascist. Hitler is alive and well in England and Australia. It is now pet lovers, not the Jews, that must be prepared to emigrate to a safe haven. The new Israel will be the first country that allows people to OWN their pets and, not just be their "carers" managed and supervised by a private "charity".
Digger09
on October 11, 2009
at 10:00 AM
Well said Caroline.
Sadly, there are a great number of British parents that need to be removed from their children.
More sadly is that we have to do it the other way around for the sake of the children.
The trouble is the body in charge of doing these unpleasant things does not always get it right and that is the nub of the problem.
Britain carries far too many Jobsworths for it's own good. British people seem to have a need to look up to somebody or other and will follow blindly. The Blair years are demonstrable proof of far down a Country can go in a relatively short space of time. We need real leadership with people at the top setting the right example.
The Mps expenses scandal has blown the lid off leadership, may be for ever. I wish Cameron luck but he should beware that NOT identifying with being British may well be his downfall.
However, this probably does not sit well with the NuLabour/EU friendlies out there.
C.Brooks
on October 11, 2009
at 09:54 AM
I left Britain 12 years ago, thoroughly disillusioned after my Asian wife and I were turned down for adoption because we were 'racially naive' (ie we said we had experienced no racial problems in our home county of Norfolk). The case received a lot of publicity, and I was left with two over-riding impresssions of The System: 1) That Social Services are out of control; 2) That there are many more sinister cases which never see the light of day, often hidden by the 'respect for confidentially' - so convenient for the power-mad social engineers who run The System. The politicians made all kinds of promises to reign them in, but as we see, as usual this has come to naught.
To emigrate was the best decision I ever made. If anyone wants to join me in lovely central Portugal, contact me to find out how.
James Lawrence
on October 11, 2009
at 09:47 AM
"Caroline" are you by any chance carrying Stalin's brain?
dominic lennon
on October 10, 2009
at 11:07 PM
Report this commentI tend to agree with Jackthesmilingblack. I left UK 10 years ago because I could not face living in a country so bereft of its own sense of identity. The intervening years have only reinforced the correctness of my decision. Britain is now an open sewer of political correctness, small minded bureaucracy, and an obsession with race. Any right minded person would just have to leave. I have renounced my British citizenship and insist to everyone who asks that I am not British, even though I sound like it. I truly hope David Cameron can make a difference, but I fear the problem is now with the Brits themselves. They are a shallow people, the great heroes of the past must be looking on with contempt.
Kev Cooper
on October 10, 2009
at 10:56 PM
Why doesn't a national newspaper mount a campaign ? How is it that social workers can kidnap children ?
Why doesn't the Misister for Children or Harriet Harman intervene and show she cares about humanity?
This country is as bad as any communist state and nothing ever gets done to stop it. That is why extremist parties will gain votes.
Darren Himmler , Brentwood Essex
on October 10, 2009
at 10:19 PM
This is state-sponsored kidnap. Any populace with a notion of civil liberties would have taken it to the street by now, burning local government offices and police stations to the ground. But not those "take it in the ass" losers in UK. Truly Britisher pals, your best, indeed only option is to hate it and leave it. While you still can.
Jackthesmilingblack
on October 10, 2009
at 10:00 PM
Well Booker
If you make proceedings
public what you will "achieve " is that children will not be able to disclose. They will not disclose out of love and they will not disclose out of fear. Well done super. Lots of children will end up remaining with abusive and or neglectful parents. We have much too high a tolerance for neglect in this country. Other countries may leave children nominally in their parents care ,but not in their homes. They end up long term fostered. This is good for the foster parents who get paid, but offers no emotional security for the child. They are forever obliged to take notice of the emotional needs of inadequate parents.
These are not matters for your personal ambition Booker. Put a journalistic sock in it.
Caroline
on October 10, 2009
at 08:47 PM
Christopher, have you sent this to the President of the Family Division? If not you should, along with an ultimatum that he hold a no-holds barred investigation into this case or you will ask the UN Commissioner for Children to investigate. The resulting report would no doubt be hideously embarrassing.
You should also send these documents to the local police force, and ask them to investigate whether there is sufficient evidence to charge the social workers with child abduction.
To View The Original Article CLICK HERE
Published: 7:08PM BST 10 Oct 2009
This week I return to one of the most disturbing stories this column has ever reported. It began on a morning in April 2007 when the home of a respectable middle-class family in Sussex was overrun by 18 policemen and two RSPCA officials, supposedly looking for guns. When the father, a professional dog breeder, volubly protested, he and his pregnant wife were arrested and handcuffed, to the horror of their watching five-year old daughter (whom I call, for legal reasons, "Jenny").
East Sussex social workers were then called to remove the little girl. Her mother had a miscarriage while in custody and returned to an empty home, left in chaos. Jenny has remained in foster care ever since, and despite her parents pleading for her return through 74 legal hearings, the ruling by a family court judge last March that she be put out for adoption was upheld in July by the Appeal Court.
Having now seen further documents relating to this saga, I can understand why the family's GP wrote that in 33 years as a doctor he had never come across "such an appalling case of injustice". The first document was her parents' careful chronology of every step in the story, including transcriptions of many of their telephone conversations and meetings with Jenny, invariably under strict surveillance by social workers or the foster carer.
The dominant impression from these recordings is of Jenny's desperation to be reunited with her parents, and of an increasingly distraught child who cannot understand what has been done to her. The parents claim that pressure was put on her constantly to say that she didn't want to see them again. Why did the family court judge not allow this evidence to be heard in court, although she did admit accounts of these "contacts" by the social workers?
A second document is the judgment by Mr Justice Bodey in the Appeal Court confirming that Jenny must be put out for adoption. No evidence had been produced that her parents ever caused Jenny physical or mental harm. His ruling centred on two points. One was evidence that her home was a mess on the day of the raid, although those who knew the house well testify that it was normally clean and tidy. The other was that, when the family's home was invaded by 18 policemen (a figure confirmed by one policeman in evidence), the father verbally abused them in colourful fashion (but didn't attack them physically). Are these really adequate grounds for tearing a child and her parents permanently apart?
A third document is the book Forced Abduction by Ian Josephs, a businessman who has taken an active interest in the removal of children from their parents by social workers ever since he was a Tory county councillor in the 1960s. He acted in part of the Jenny case as a "Mackenzie friend", that is, an informal assistant and adviser.
Mr Josephs shows that Britain is almost the only country in Europe which routinely allows children to be separated from parents without their consent. Indeed, he reproduces a press release put out in 2003 by Hammersmith & Fulham Council boasting how, under a Local Public Service Agreement, it had received a reward of £500,000 from central government for hitting its target of 101 adoptions in the year. This particular, highly controversial scheme of cash bonuses has, thankfully, since been abandoned.
The impression given by these documents supports the GP's view that this is an "appalling case of injustice". Social workers, lawyers and judges seem enmeshed in a system heavily skewed towards putting children out for adoption – by a process so shrouded in secrecy that it seems designed more to protect the system itself than the interests of the child. Most alarming of all is that there seems no one with the authority to intervene in cases such as Jenny's, where that system appears to have left both a loving family and justice horribly betrayed.
Email Print
Share
Email Print Text Size
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6292708/Adoption-system-is-UKs-shameful-secret.html
TelegraphNews
Comments: 9
What is the difference between a Rottweiler and a social worker?
You will get your child back from a Rottweiler.
The Hitler's Nazis had the brown shirts and the SS to do their dirty works. Brittan and Australia now have the RSPCA. No government would do this as it would be political suicide so they get a "well respected" "caring charity" to do it for them. The World is becomming fascist. Hitler is alive and well in England and Australia. It is now pet lovers, not the Jews, that must be prepared to emigrate to a safe haven. The new Israel will be the first country that allows people to OWN their pets and, not just be their "carers" managed and supervised by a private "charity".
Digger09
on October 11, 2009
at 10:00 AM
Well said Caroline.
Sadly, there are a great number of British parents that need to be removed from their children.
More sadly is that we have to do it the other way around for the sake of the children.
The trouble is the body in charge of doing these unpleasant things does not always get it right and that is the nub of the problem.
Britain carries far too many Jobsworths for it's own good. British people seem to have a need to look up to somebody or other and will follow blindly. The Blair years are demonstrable proof of far down a Country can go in a relatively short space of time. We need real leadership with people at the top setting the right example.
The Mps expenses scandal has blown the lid off leadership, may be for ever. I wish Cameron luck but he should beware that NOT identifying with being British may well be his downfall.
However, this probably does not sit well with the NuLabour/EU friendlies out there.
C.Brooks
on October 11, 2009
at 09:54 AM
I left Britain 12 years ago, thoroughly disillusioned after my Asian wife and I were turned down for adoption because we were 'racially naive' (ie we said we had experienced no racial problems in our home county of Norfolk). The case received a lot of publicity, and I was left with two over-riding impresssions of The System: 1) That Social Services are out of control; 2) That there are many more sinister cases which never see the light of day, often hidden by the 'respect for confidentially' - so convenient for the power-mad social engineers who run The System. The politicians made all kinds of promises to reign them in, but as we see, as usual this has come to naught.
To emigrate was the best decision I ever made. If anyone wants to join me in lovely central Portugal, contact me to find out how.
James Lawrence
on October 11, 2009
at 09:47 AM
"Caroline" are you by any chance carrying Stalin's brain?
dominic lennon
on October 10, 2009
at 11:07 PM
Report this commentI tend to agree with Jackthesmilingblack. I left UK 10 years ago because I could not face living in a country so bereft of its own sense of identity. The intervening years have only reinforced the correctness of my decision. Britain is now an open sewer of political correctness, small minded bureaucracy, and an obsession with race. Any right minded person would just have to leave. I have renounced my British citizenship and insist to everyone who asks that I am not British, even though I sound like it. I truly hope David Cameron can make a difference, but I fear the problem is now with the Brits themselves. They are a shallow people, the great heroes of the past must be looking on with contempt.
Kev Cooper
on October 10, 2009
at 10:56 PM
Why doesn't a national newspaper mount a campaign ? How is it that social workers can kidnap children ?
Why doesn't the Misister for Children or Harriet Harman intervene and show she cares about humanity?
This country is as bad as any communist state and nothing ever gets done to stop it. That is why extremist parties will gain votes.
Darren Himmler , Brentwood Essex
on October 10, 2009
at 10:19 PM
This is state-sponsored kidnap. Any populace with a notion of civil liberties would have taken it to the street by now, burning local government offices and police stations to the ground. But not those "take it in the ass" losers in UK. Truly Britisher pals, your best, indeed only option is to hate it and leave it. While you still can.
Jackthesmilingblack
on October 10, 2009
at 10:00 PM
Well Booker
If you make proceedings
public what you will "achieve " is that children will not be able to disclose. They will not disclose out of love and they will not disclose out of fear. Well done super. Lots of children will end up remaining with abusive and or neglectful parents. We have much too high a tolerance for neglect in this country. Other countries may leave children nominally in their parents care ,but not in their homes. They end up long term fostered. This is good for the foster parents who get paid, but offers no emotional security for the child. They are forever obliged to take notice of the emotional needs of inadequate parents.
These are not matters for your personal ambition Booker. Put a journalistic sock in it.
Caroline
on October 10, 2009
at 08:47 PM
Christopher, have you sent this to the President of the Family Division? If not you should, along with an ultimatum that he hold a no-holds barred investigation into this case or you will ask the UN Commissioner for Children to investigate. The resulting report would no doubt be hideously embarrassing.
You should also send these documents to the local police force, and ask them to investigate whether there is sufficient evidence to charge the social workers with child abduction.
To View The Original Article CLICK HERE
ALSO:
Hi,
Yet more about StolenKids can be found in general at:
http://stolenkids-bloggers.blogspot.com/
& in specific at:
http://stolenkids-sads.blogspot.com/
Hi,
Yet more about StolenKids can be found in general at:
http://stolenkids-bloggers.blogspot.com/
& in specific at:
http://stolenkids-sads.blogspot.com/
Story after story about children seized by The Social Services. Yes of course they get it right on lots of occasions but due to secrecy of Courts & procedures to protect them they can get away with this obscene behaviour.
StolenKids is for people who have been abused by the Courts & Civil Servants IN OUR NAME; there they can air their own story for help, support or just for catharsis.
By drawing back the curtains to let the light in, and opening the windows to let fresh air in, you can help these unfortunate people to gain Justice.
Help expose the vile behaviour of Courts, Police & Social Services when they occur and also examples where they got it spot on when they occur!
It is up to us to help make sure our society functions and children get the very best.
Regards,
Greg L-W.
I further commented:
Gladiatrix - with respect is it not OUR duty to take these actions and thank Reporters for Reporting?
Caroline - you are quite right, in a communist country, or you will note from The Lisbon Constitution in Britain also secrecy is the cloak behind which state crime is conducted and the State machine takes control of our lives.
Your summary is bunkum - it is ONLY with exposure that such criminal State activities are overturned.
With your duplicitous advice Thalidomide victims would never have gained compensation, or do you not remember Harold Evans. Was it not the reporters of The Washington Post who exposed the criminality of Richard Nixon?
The more light and fresh air Booker can let in the better - I have known him for many years & respect his lack of personal ambition at the expense of innocent victims.
As for the family concerned I have tried to support them since their daughter was first seized and there has NEVER been any claim EVER that was in any way sustainable that they have or ever would do anything other than spoil their daughter and both love and care for her.
There are clear and unequivocal independent expert medical reports that their daughter HAS been traumatised and harmed by the system.
As an uninformed critic may I suggest the sock is best placed in your opinions, but unlike the parents you have a fundamental human right of freedom of speech!
Regards,
Greg L-W.
http://StolenKids-Bloggers.blogspot.com
To understand the Concept & Service of StolenKids-
where you can help yourself and others at:
where you can help yourself and others at:
StolenKids-
To See The Links Page
CLICK HERE
CLICK HERE
Published Date: 26 June 2003
