Nowadays, the term “Kafkaesque” is overused. The jaw-dropping findings that emerged on the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mail, however, cannot be described in any other way.
Police stormed a young family’s house one evening in February 2016, snatching a crying child from his upset mother.
The two-year-parents old’s were not even informed of the secret court session, which the cops were carrying out on the judge’s orders.
Worst of all, Colin English, who it subsequently discovered had been stealing the family’s mail and engaging in other dishonest behavior, was receiving the little child right away.
Later, the boy’s mother discovered published accounts about a murder accusation English had faced in the 1990s over the unidentified death of his former partner. The 18 months that English spent on remand were spent “drawing sketches and creating a puzzle about where the corpse may be,” despite the fact that he was cleared and had no prior convictions.
The mother recognized the handwriting when she viewed this puzzle. The identical thing has previously surfaced on a few of her missing posts.
The two-year-parents old’s were not even informed that a secret court hearing had taken place, and the cops were obeying a judge’s orders as a result.
The Mail has now been allowed to reveal the details of this awful tragedy after a lengthy court struggle.
As a mother of four, I find it difficult to fathom the visceral agony of having your newborn stolen from you by armed state agents without your knowledge. And as a former lawyer, I am horrified by the shortcomings of a judicial system that would have let such an incident to take place.
The child’s parents had both behaved honorably. Instead, English—whom one court referred to as “manipulative and dishonest”—had falsified the parents’ signatures to imply that they had given their consent for him and his wife Yvonne to take custody of the child.
English, who they knew as a neighbor and who had looked after the children of the working mother, launched a terrifying campaign in which he also took the child’s passport and birth certificate and falsely said that the mother had taken good care of her three children.
Only after he had won custody of the kid did his dishonesty come to light.
We may infer a number of inferences from this exceptional example. The first is the blatant inadequacy of the social work and family court systems. The fact that this family’s situation was especially Kafkaesque was that they had the resources and didn’t have access to legal assistance to convince the courts to order their son’s safe return. Later, they were forced to sell their home. The Englishes abandoned their custody request just before a second scheduled hearing at the family court in July 2016, and the little child was thankfully returned to his parents.
The child was being transferred directly to Colin English, who subsequently admitted to taking the family’s mail and engaging in other dishonest behavior, which was the worst of all.
All of this adds up to a damning indictment of both the British family courts and our social work system.
The mother, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said the following incriminating things: “No one in social services bothered to check up the allegations made by Colin English with me.” I’ve been severely let down.
I oversee a school. I have gone through rigorous safeguarding checks, just like everyone else concerned with children’s well-being. How therefore could English’s fictitious paperwork have persuaded a judge to order the separation of a crying little child from his mother?
How many more of these cozy “deals” between parents and foster carers have been made and are now in effect in Britain? It is clear that there is a danger for young children who are susceptible to manipulation by dishonest people like English.
The solution must be known. However, we are unable to do so at this time since family court hearings for situations involving child safety and custody are conducted in secret.
Yes, this has what seem to be good goals: to safeguard children’s identities when they are in danger. However, it must never be used as an excuse for blatant ineptitude.
Here are my suggestions for preventing a recurrence of this horrible incident.
First off, no parent should ever have their kid taken away based only on a signature, which can be faked.
There is no other way to uphold strong standards in a high-stakes legal sector but to have family courts accessible to public inspection, including by the press. Any confidentiality that does exist should be there to safeguard kids.
Third, in order to ensure that the parents have enough time to get legal counsel, hearings on child custody must never take place without them being present or at the very least being aware of the proceedings.
The Kafkaesque horror for this family came to an end. But the horrifying ineptitude that the Mail has shown ought to be the trigger for everyone to declare enough.
Co-founding member of The Conservative Woman is Laura Perrins.