Innocent
but presumed guilty
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23729-1981051,00.html
Times
- 13th January 2006
How many
homes are broken by the closed and secretive family courts? Frighteningly,
we don't know
THE 1990
ROCHDALE abuse scandal, brilliantly documented last night in Real
Story on BBC One, is one of the most extreme in the lexicon of social
service disasters. One minute a little boy is telling ghost stories,
the next he finds himself in care amid rumours of satanic abuse.
Even when a judge throws out the case, he is kept in care for ten
more years, because the social workers change their story and claim
that his parents are unfit.
We all hope
that things have changed since then. But the almost complete censorship
of what goes on in the world of “child protection” makes
it impossible to know even how many cases go through the family
courts. And 15 years on, the BBC’s court battle to identify
the Rochdale social workers shows that the professionals still close
ranks just as they always did.
The full
Rochdale story is only being told because the children are now over
16 and are free to cry out against the social workers who refused
to tell them why they were in care, or why they could see their
parents for only an hour a month. Rochdale Council claimed that
the social workers could not be named because to do so would hurt
the children. The mantra of “child privacy” was used
to protect the professionals. Now that the children have gone public,
the council argues that the BBC is wrong to broadcast something
that might put people off social work. Right.
To acknowledge
that decent people make mistakes, as the Rochdale judge did in 1991,
is not to “demonise” social workers. It is to lessen
the likelihood of miscarriages of justice that tear innocent families
apart. Family courts, which operate in camera, generally have a
lower standard of proof than criminal courts, because they cannot
send people to jail. But to lose your children, and for them to
lose you, is a life sentence of another kind.
In the past
year I have been approached by several parents who have had children
taken away. Even those who managed to get them back are still too
frightened to talk publicly. They describe what it is like to find
yourself on the other side of a one-way mirror, innocent but presumed
guilty, by professionals who are almost completely unaccountable.
Your instinct is to cry for help, but you are told that talking
to anyone could jeopardise your case. It is impossible for me to
judge the merit of these cases, since I am not permitted to read
the legal papers. Even if I could, I suspect that not all would
be clear-cut.
The courts
struggle daily to weave solid judgments from the strands of frayed,
imperfect relationships. But what is unbearable is the bewilderment
and helplessness of parents who can be plunged overnight into a
world of acronyms, key workers, guardians, counsellors, summonses,
complex reports and, for many, an ever-changing cast of legal aid
solicitors who are always rushing to the next case.
A mother
(I shall call her Sarah) entered this world voluntarily, when she
began to suspect that her daughter was being abused by her former
parter, father of the girl. She approached social services for help.
But they ended up taking her daughter away from her, and placing
her with the very man she had accused. I have heard only her side
of the extraordinary story. The expert psychiatrist appointed by
the court decided that Sarah had coached her daughter to make false
allegations — something that is not unknown. But he did so
without ever having met Sarah, her daughter or the boyfriend her
daughter accused. He never appeared in court to be cross-examined.
He merely watched the police video of her daughter’s interview
and posted his report. Yet the judge apparently considered this
a sufficient basis on which to take Sarah’s daughter away.
The business
of interviewing young children about abuse allegations is an extremely
delicate one. It has become more sophisticated since Daniel dreamt
about ghosts in Rochdale in 1990. Children are rarely put through
more than two interviews at most, to spare them the trauma and to
lessen the likelihood of embellishment. The language they use is
analysed to see, for example, whether the words they use are too
mature for their age and likely to have been suggested to them.
But in the end professionals have to make notoriously tricky judgments.
And they are not always right.
Sarah is
now desperate. She believes her daughter is living with an abuser.
Sarah has been offered no counselling, though that would surely
be a logical outcome of the court’s conclusion. She communicates
with her daughter only by postcards, some of which have been returned
by social workers as unsuitable. In a situation that would make
me physically sick with fury and fear, she still does not look like
the unstable liar she is accused of being.
It is not
surprising that a judge would rely upon an expert that they knew.
But insulating child protection professionals so completely does
increase the likelihood that they will sometimes reinforce in one
another a mistaken view. The veil of secrecy also spawns a host
of rumours. I know mothers who have not taken their child to A&E
after a minor accident, for fear of some spurious allegation being
made against them. I know mothers who have stopped themselves admitting
the extent of their post-natal depression, when they saw a certain
look in the doctor's eye.
The media
has been kept out of the family justice system to stop prying eyes
making delicate situations even messier. But the secrecy is too
complete. In 2004 Mr Justice Munby said: “We cannot afford
to proceed on the blinkered assumption that there have been no miscarriages
of justice in the family justice system. This is something that
has to be addressed with honesty and candour if the family justice
system is not to suffer further loss of public confidence.”
Allowing
journalists into family courts, even on a restricted reporting basis,
could make both sides more honest. It could give the innocent a
chance to cry for help and be heard. The media must keep its mouth
shut much of the time but we should let it keep its eyes open, not
only to what happened 15 years ago, but also to what may be happening
today.
Council
could face massive damages bill 8th January 2006
