The state has a terrible secret: it kidnaps our children
by Louise Tickle, Guardian:
Councils are keeping children in care against their parents’ wishes. Until family courts are opened up, these human rights abuses will continue to be hidden from view.
Imagine you’re a single mother. You get injured in a car accident, and a kind friend offers to look after your two young boys while you’re in hospital. You accept with relief. Three weeks later, when you get home, you’re still a bit shaky, so your friend suggests it might be best if she has the boys for another few days. You are unsure, but she is persuasive. First thing on Friday you send a text saying you will pick them up from school. A few hours later – you’ve been awaiting her reply, slightly puzzled at the delay – a text pings back: they are really looking forward to the fun weekend she has planned. How about revisiting the situation on Monday?
With mounting unease and some anger you race over and tell her the kids are coming home with you. You are met with a smiling refusal. Until she feels that you are well enough, she explains calmly, they are staying with her. Then she bundles them into her car and heads off to a holiday camp. Presumably at this point you would call the police. Given that there are laws in this country about kidnap, you would get your children back pronto, and your “friend” would be in serious trouble.
Kidnap is not a crime typically associated with Britain. But it is happening, right now, and the local authorities involved don’t want you to know. High court judge Mr Justice Keehan, in a scathing judgment earlier this year at Nottingham family court, revealed that at least 16 children have been “wrongly and abusively” looked after by Herefordshire council, under something called a section 20 arrangement, for “wholly inappropriate” periods of time. For one boy, that was the first nine years of his life after he was born to his 14-year-old mother. For another boy it was eight years, from the age of eight to 16, despite his mother on several occasions withdrawing her consent. Shockingly, at the time of the judgment, 14 children were still being wrongfully looked after by Herefordshire on section 20 arrangements, despite the local authority knowing full well the judge’s displeasure.
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