Yesterday, there were calls for police to look into a former murder suspect who had tricked social workers into giving him the child of his next-door neighbors.
The youngster was with computer programmer Colin English and his wife Yvonne for more than four months after the courts approved a foster agreement with the falsified signature of the true parents.
Last night, the boy’s mother wanted to know why police had not looked into Mr. English, who had previously been cleared of a murder accusation in 1991 on the judge’s orders, despite her continuously notifying them over a long period of time.
“They should take proper action against Colin English,” she said. The mere fact that my tale is out does not imply that my family and I have received justice. This is just the start.
The youngster was with computer programmer Colin English and his wife Yvonne for more than four months after the courts approved a foster agreement with the false signatures of the genuine parents.
‘From the beginning, it appeared to me that Sussex Police believed I was causing problems, or maybe the fact is that they were simply too lazy to care. I received no assistance nor guidance.
Norman Baker, a former Sussex Lib Dem MP, also urged action.
“It looks to be a major scam involving a vulnerable individual,” he said, adding that the police should be naturally interested in the situation.
Only last week, after a court struggle won by the Daily Mail to compel its disclosure, were the specifics of a scathing ruling from the unsettling 2016 case made public.
Mr. English, whom the boy’s parents originally ‘totally’ trusted, was found to have utilized access to the mother’s home to take her letters as part of his scheme to deceive social workers and persuade a court that she had to give up her kid, according to Judge Janet Waddicor.
In order to support his claims, he also grabbed the child’s passport and birth certificate. He then filed “baseless complaints” with a council’s social services department over the mother’s alleged abuse of her children.
The court decided that despite a health worker’s worries that Mr. English was “grooming” the lady, no one spoke to the mother before he was given custody. The boy’s parents were compelled to sell their home in order to raise the money necessary to hire attorneys to fight for their son’s return after he was left in the Englishes’ care.
In a statement on the incident, Sussex Police said that “the police has not received any formal complaints” and that “no criminal offences in relation to this instance” had been examined.
In spite of the Mail’s discovery of significant communication between the mother and the police demonstrating that she had spent years voicing issues, this is the case.
It also contains an email she sent in November 2018 to the force’s then-chief constable, Giles York, in which she expressed concern for her family and the general public due to the “police lack of participation.” In the past, she said, she had “approached the police on multiple times” to express her worry about what was occurring; on one occasion, she said, a PCSO had even laughed at her.
‘Chess’ puzzles he devised for police hunting body
The child’s mother first became suspicious about Colin English after discovering that handwriting on a stolen letter matched documents from a murder case he was involved in years earlier.
From online searches, she found out the computer programmer had been charged with killing Therese Clare Terry, who vanished during a trip to Ireland in 1990.
The case was dubbed the ‘Riddler’ or ‘Chess Board Mystery’ because of a number of apparent puzzles Mr English wrote for police searching for the missing woman’s body while he awaited trial.
His handwriting on these clues matched that on a letter ‘stolen’ and later returned to the child’s mother. Detectives had believed the apparent clues – a mixture of maps, dates and chess moves – could hold the answer to Mrs Terry’s whereabouts.
Police even asked British chess grandmaster Raymond Keene to try to crack the case. After 18 months on remand, Mr English was acquitted at Liverpool Crown Court in 1991 on a judge’s instructions without standing trial.
The father of three later claimed the puzzles were a ‘hoax’ and said he couldn’t believe how gullible the police were.
He said Mrs Terry was still alive but had refused to come forward after his arrest to punish him, telling a newspaper: ‘I want her to explain why she left me to rot.’
His penmanship on these hints matched that on a letter that was purportedly stolen but then given back to the mother of the kid. Detectives had assumed the apparent clues, which included a combination of maps, dates, and chess moves, may provide the whereabouts of Mrs. Terry.
The mother subsequently expressed her “upset” that the matter hadn’t been handled when she sent the police stolen letter with Mr. English’s handwriting in an email to the inspector tasked with investigating the case.
Based on newspaper accounts of drawings Mr. English had created while he was awaiting trial for the prior murder accusation, she had been able to identify his handwriting. A few weeks later, when she followed up to find out what was going on, the officer informed her that “investigations of this sort may be long.”
The mother had expressed worries about the “welfare and the safety of her family” after being “targeted by her neighbors,” according to a Sussex Police evaluation given to her in 2019. Every criminal incident that was reported to the police, it continued, “was evaluated at the time of complaint.”
According to the report, the mother was listed as a “victim” of many instances between 2010 and 2015, including theft and mail theft.
However, it came to the conclusion that no further action would be taken and urged the mother to contact the county council with any more questions. The inspector responded to the mother’s subsequent complaint about the inaction of the police by saying, “This is with our Professional Standards Department.”
The council expressed satisfaction with the way its processes were followed. The Englishes told the Mail that the judge’s conclusions are “incorrect” and “without substance,” and they reject any wrongdoing. Later, Sussex Police acknowledged that “a number of items” the mother had mentioned had been “recorded and examined.”
According to a force spokeswoman, the Professional Standards Department “registered the allegation made by her as an official complaint.”
We invite anybody with additional or fresh information about a crime to get in touch with us.
Kafkaesque horror shows courts are not fit for purpose
By Laura Perrins for the Daily Mail
The word ‘Kafkaesque’ is overused nowadays. But nothing else describes the jaw-dropping revelations that appeared on the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mail.
One evening in February 2016, police descended on the home of a young family and snatched a screaming toddler from his distraught mother.
The officers were acting on a judge’s instructions following a secret court hearing – one that the two-year-old’s parents had not even been told about.
Worst of all, the little boy was being handed straight into the hands of Colin English – a man, it later emerged, who had been stealing the family’s post, among other deceitful behaviour.
The boy’s mother later found press reports of a murder charge English had faced in the 1990s over the killing of his former lover, whose body has never been found. English was acquitted and has no criminal record, but he spent his 18 months on remand ‘doing sketches and writing a riddle about where the body might be’.
When the mother saw this riddle, she recognised the handwriting. It was the same as had appeared on some of her missing post.
At last, following a dramatic legal battle, the Mail has been able to bring the facts of this terrible case to light.
The officers were acting on a judge’s instructions following a secret court hearing – one that the two-year-old’s parents had not even been told about. A file photo is used above
As a mother of four, I can scarcely imagine the visceral horror of having your infant taken from you without warning by uniformed state officials. And as a former barrister, I am appalled at the failings of a legal system that could have allowed such an event to occur.
Neither of the child’s parents had done anything wrong. Instead, English – described as ‘manipulative and deceitful’ by one judge – had forged the parents’ signatures to suggest that they had agreed to him and his wife Yvonne taking custody of the little boy. In a chilling campaign, English – who was known to them as a neighbour and had looked after the working mother’s children – had also stolen the child’s passport and birth certificate and made groundless claims about the mother’s care of her three children.
His deceit came to light only after he had acquired custody of the child.
There are several conclusions we can draw from this extraordinary case. The first is that the family court and the social-work system are manifestly not fit for purpose. What was particularly Kafkaesque about this family’s experience is that they had insufficient funds, and no access to legal aid, to compel the courts to bring them the safe return of their son. They later had to sell their house. Just before a new planned hearing at the family court in July 2016, the Englishes withdrew their custody claim, and the little boy was mercifully restored to his parents.
It all amounts to a towering indictment of our social-work system and Britain’s secretive family courts.
In the damning words of the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons: ‘No-one in social services bothered to check out the stories told by Colin English with me… I feel deeply let down.’
I am a school governor. Like anyone involved with children’s wellbeing, I have undergone strict safeguarding checks. So how could English’s fake documents have been enough to convince a court that a screaming toddler should be separated from his mother?
Just how many other such cosy ‘deals’ have been signed between parents and foster carers, and are now in force in Britain? The risk to vulnerable children, prone to manipulation by deceitful individuals such as English, is obvious.
We must know the answer. But, for the moment, we can’t: because cases involving child protection and custody are heard in secret in family courts.
Yes, this has ostensibly noble aims: to protect the identity of children in vulnerable situations. But it must never become the cover for rank incompetence.
Here are my proposals to prevent any repeat of this appalling case.
First, no child should ever be snatched from their parents on nothing but a signature – which can be forged.
Second, family courts must be open to public scrutiny, including by the Press: there is no other way to maintain strict standards in a high-stakes legal field. Any secrecy that does exist should be there to protect children.
Third, hearings into child custody must never take place without the parents being present or at least informed of the proceedings, so that proper legal representation can be arranged.
This family’s Kafkaesque nightmare eventually ended. But the terrifying incompetence the Mail has exposed should be the moment we all say: enough.
Laura Perrins is co-founder of The Conservative Woman