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Family Groups - Blind justice without a name
Today, once again, we are in
danger of missing an opportunity. For the Government’s
otherwise excellent consultation on opening up the family
courts barely touches on this issue. It concentrates on the
anonymity of children and families, and says virtually nothing
about the anonymity of professionals. Making more judgments
public, as the Government proposes, would clearly be a great
step forward. But if we simply get anonymised judgments, such
as that of McFarlane, we are not much farther forward in holding
fraudsters to account.
Judges currently decide whether
to make their judgments public, and whether to name professionals.
Very few do, despite guidance from the Court of Appeal (in
the McFarlane case, the court even kept secret the identity
of the defence counsel). I have no desire to perpetrate witch-hunts:
each witness could be given an identity code, if that was
felt absolutely necessary to protect their identities, but
that would at least enable those of us who want to see justice
done track their record.
The debate about child protection
and anonymity is always couched in terms of the interests
of the child. Those who work in this field have come to believe
that a child’s privacy is somehow synonymous with their
own. But if some people do not understand what real evidence
is, should they not be accountable? The oldest law of bureaucracies
is “first protect ourselves”. How many more cases
do there have to be before someone finally kicks down their
hiding place?
THIS WEEK Tim and Gina Williams,
a Welsh couple, were reunited with their three children. Social
workers had whisked them into care two years ago in the wholly
erroneous belief that Mr Williams was a paedophile. He had
made the fatal mistake of calling social services about an
11-year-old boy he had found half-naked with his daughter.
But the tables quickly turned. A doctor claimed to have found
evidence of sexual abuse, social workers jumped to conclusions,
and the Williamses were prevented from seeing their children
except for an hour and a half twice a week. They said that
their children never understood what was happening. They thought
their parents did not want them. Imagine it, and weep.
The Williamses were saved because
an American doctor testified that there was not a shred of
evidence of abuse. In a searing judgment, Judge Crispin Masterman
has ruled that the children should never have been removed.
He criticised social workers for failing to follow the most
basic procedures. Yet the doctor and the social workers remain
anonymous.
Newport City Council, named
as the local authority, has promised a review. This is unusual.
In many such cases, even local councillors do not know when
their own staff perpetrate miscarriages of justice. In March
Mr Justice McFarlane publicly castigated social workers who
had removed a nine-year-old girl from her parents for 14 months
on the absolutely false pretext that her mother might be suffering
from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy (MSbP). The judge
found that every one of the 13 assertions made by the social
services team leader was “misleading or incomplete or
wrong”.
But guess what? We will never
know who the team leader is. The Tory MP and ex-council leader
Sir Paul Beresford, who has called for those involved to be
named, has been unable even to find out which local authority
was involved. I have a good idea which one it is. But I am
willing to bet that even the leader of that council does not
know. I am also willing to bet that none of the people involved
has even been disciplined.
This is a racket. All other
public servants are held accountable for their mistakes. John
Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP, puts it this way: “In
a criminal case, where someone can be given a life sentence,
police officers are quoted by name as they give evidence.
There is no justification for professionals being anonymous
when a parent is given an effective life sentence [by losing
their child].”
If we do not know their identities,
we also cannot tell whether the same people have given misleading
evidence in other cases. If the McFarlane case social workers
thought they saw MSbP in a woman whose only crime was to have
taken her daughter to hospital for stomach pain (I kid you
not), how many other times were they visited by similarly
delusional visions?
Did Gordon Oliver, the social
worker recently jailed for sexually assaulting children over
a period of 20 years, ever give evidence in court? What about
Martin Thei, the Essex County Council worker who killed himself
five years ago after being arrested by police for downloading
child porn? One campaign group claims that Thei made many
reports that resulted in children being taken into care and/or
adopted. The council says that is unlikely but it is not absolutely
sure. I have talked to one family in whose case Thei’s
report was crucial. This has never been reviewed.
The number of calls I receive
from parents, some who have lost their children for ever and
some who have got them back after dreadful battles, makes
me increasingly concerned that social workers and experts
are manufacturing evidence; that they are concentrated in
certain parts of the country; and that they cover up for each
other, because they are convinced that they are right. We
are living in a hell of good intentions. We can only root
out the bad apples if we can see how they infect the picture.
Anonymity clouds every attempt
at justice. Two years ago, after Angela Cannings was cleared
of killing her babies, Margaret Hodge, then Children’s
Minister, announced a review of certain cases where children
had been taken into care. But her “review” consisted
of asking the same old people in the same old local authorities
to question their own original judgments. Only one case was
subsequently overturned. That tells us nothing, because Hodge
failed utterly to grasp the opportunity to monitor specific
councils and witnesses and to see whether there were patterns
to their behaviour.
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