Blind
justice without a name
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23729-2410526,00.html
Times
- 19th October 2006
If social
workers really are manufacturing evidence in child abuse cases,
their anonymity is assured.
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.
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?
'Sorry
saga' of false abuse claim 17th July 2006
