Trial by Jeory

A few years ago, I witnessed first hand the huge failings and likely corruption of the family court system as a close friend suffered the life-changing tragedy of having her baby daughter taken from her and handed to the child’s father purely on the basis of the report of a single psychologist.

In that case, both parents held UK passports but were living in Valencia as expats when the baby was born. There was a breakdown in their relationship soon after the birth and the mother, during a visit back to the UK, was urged by me and her family to settle back here. She decided to do just that. When she told the baby’s father of her decision, he filed a case under the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction.

This convention had not foreseen the increasing number of cases where a child is born in such situations abroad. Because the child was born in Spain, the UK High Court said there was nothing it could do and both mother and child would have to return to Valencia. Once back, the father filed for custody and set about making up a pack of lies and dossier aimed at character assassination.

The father, superficially charming, and, unlikely the mother, was fluent in Spanish and worked as a translator with variously well-connected people in Spain.

As part of the custody process, both were interviewed by a court-appointed psychologist. The father went first and charmed the “expert” with his tales of woe against the mother. The “expert”, herself relatively recently qualified, then interviewed the mother via a translator by using the accusations made by the father. I have seen the transcripts and so have true experts Harley Street; it was a fundamentally flawed interview. The translator even made several mistakes. The psychologist recommended custody to the father because, unlike the mother, he could speak Spanish, he had a job and a future in Spain, he spoke highly of Spain and he had an apartment there (the apartment he had evicted the mother from). The fact that he had no family there and that the mother could demonstrate a loving family back home in the UK could look after her and their granddaughter made not one bit of difference.

Since then, the mother has, against all the odds, remained in Valencia. There is massive unemployment there, yet she has managed to survive by teaching English to students and by forging a very loyal and strong network of good friends. She sees her daughter one Tuesday afternoon a week and once every other weekend. The daughter loves and misses her, despite being fed more lies by the father who has refused every single request for counselling and mediation.

For a few years, I had thought that it was just Spain, a country which a little more than three decades ago was a dictatorship and where males dominate.

However, after several conversations with Lib Dem MP John Hemming, it became clear the corruption in the family courts and the child protection system exists here as well. He put me in touch with many contacts who have been monitoring this for longer than they had wished. The brilliant Christopher Booker of the Sunday Telegraph has been covering it for decades, although sadly he has been pretty much a lone voice in the UK.

I’ve done a couple of articles for the Sunday Express, for example here, and over the past couple of months, I’ve sat in courtrooms and interviewed social workers concerned about what is going on. As the number of children taken into care rises dramatically, it is clear that social workers are under enormous pressure following the Baby P scandal. The current vogue to speed up the adoption process, with David Cameron and Education ministers Michael Gove and Tim Loughton using misleading statistics to argue their case, is just the latest form of political pressure. Tony Blair’s disastrous adoption target a decade ago was to many Labour supporters a more heinous mistake than the Iraq war, they tell me.

Anyway, here’s my latest article for the Sunday Express on this issue….and if any other whistleblower, including those from Tower Hamlets and parts of east London, wishes to contact me, they can be sure of strict confidence. John Hemming will raise all these concerns when he appears before the Education select committee on Tuesday.

Ted Jeory

Whiethall Editor

SOCIAL workers are regularly “sexing up” dossiers on problem parents to remove children into care and even to place them for adoption, a whistleblower reveals today.

The experienced social worker told a Sunday Express investigation that council managers are frequently putting pressure on him and colleagues to rewrite reports considered “too positive”.



They are demanding “more dirt” on mothers and fathers to increase the chances of securing court orders that place their children into care and which boost councils’ Ofsted ratings.



The whistleblower said the worry of having another Baby P on an authority’s hands had created a climate of fear that was destroying innocent families.



The findings were last night described as a “national scandal” by one MP who is now demanding a full Parliamentary inquiry into Britain’s child protection system.


Lib Dem John Hemming will raise the issue when he appears at the Education Select Committee on Tuesday.



The committee’s chairman, Graham Stuart, has indicated he would talk to our whistleblower in confidence.



The whistlebower said the behaviour of social workers has been dramatically and “needlessly” changed since the full details over the 2007 death of Baby Peter Connelly in Haringey, north London, emerged three years ago.



He said there is now a new culture of fear in which the buck of responsibility is continuously passed up the managerial chain.

He said people in desperate need of help with their parenting skills are instead having their lives ruined by bureaucrats who fear being blamed for a highly unlikely case of extreme abuse.



Courts sitting away from the public glare are then increasingly being asked to make life-changing decisions based on  “biased” evidence, he claimed.



Latest figures show that social workers, already overstretched due to Government cuts, are dealing with rapidly rising caseloads with 42,700 children now on child protection plans.



Social workers say this is largely due to political pressure after the Baby P case.



David Cameron has said there are too many children in care and that the adoption process needs streamlining, but critics say the real issue is about why so many youngsters are taken into care in the first place.

The whistleblower, a father who works for a large authority in the south of England, said: “We’re being pressured to go against what we think is right for families.



“Personally, I’ve written reports and been told, ‘You are too positive with this family, we’ll never get it to court unless you make it more negative’. 

 I’ve actually been told that. 



“Although it goes against what you feel is right, you feel under an obligation.



“Children need to be in their families and we need to support them as much as possible and only if there are great risks do you take a child out of a family.”

When asked for an example, he said: “In order to get a child through to a child protection conference, we’re told to make the situation look bad and worse than it actually is. 



“We don’t necessarily make things up, but we can change the emphasis.



“It’s subtle. I had one child aged about eight. I’d prepared a report with the emphasis saying that the parents were prepared to make changes and that their attitude was willing. 



“But then I was told this was too positive, we’d never get it through.



“I was told to bring out more of the negative points, so I had to concentrate on the lack of cleanliness of the house. That put the parents in a bad light.”



He said these reports were used to take children out of a family home and in many cases then placed for adoption.



He added: “It destroys families. But the newer, younger social workers see this as the norm, they just want to toe the line with their bosses and that’s worrying.”



The whistleblower also raised serious concerns about council-appointed psychologists who he believes are biased in favour of their paymasters.



In particular, he said he had doubts over what he said were nebulous concepts of emotional abuse and  “attachment theories”.



He said: “These psychologists create such a high standard of for parenting that most of us would fail.”



MP John Hemming said: “I congratulate the Sunday Express in unearthing this national scandal.   



“A number of whilstleblowers have come to me to explain how expert evidence is at times sexed up and at other times plainly wrong in the Family Courts.   



“Taking the wrong children into care on the basis of sexed up dossiers and meaningless psychobabble results in other children being left to die, such as Baby P. 

“Parliament must act to sort out the child protection system.”



Nishra Mansuri, of the British Association of Social Workers, recognised the whistleblower’s comments and said: “It’s a major concern. The cuts are creating so much pressure for social workers that the right decisions are not being taken.


“We’re storing up so many problems, but the odds are against us.”