A startling story which could easily have come from this country but in fact originated in Austria, the country that loves children so much they lock them up in basements to keep them safe ...
A mother has spoken of her struggle to be reunited with her baby after authorities seized him because the child's grandmother faced jail over an unpaid speeding fine. Social workers in Austria took one-year-old Jonas Leitner from Ann-Kathrin, two months ago, insisting she would not be able to cope if her mother, Heidi, 50, who helped with babysitting, was imprisoned over the £800 ticket.
But authorities have still not reunited mother and son, despite the fact Heidi quickly paid off the debt. Distraught Ann-Kathrin, 18, now has even missed her child's first steps and understands he is with his second foster family, while social workers process the case.
Ann-Kathrin said: 'When they took him into care we rushed to borrow the money from family and friends and paid off the fine. But they didn't bring him back. It's now been seven weeks and apparently he's already with the second foster family. I don't know why they changed from the first family.’
Social workers in Wels in the province of Upper Austria have refused to discuss the case but spokesman Josef Gruber said the decision had “not been taken lightly”.
The young mother has now got a lawyer, Ronald Gabl, who has made a request at court for the child to be handed back. He said: ‘Quite apart from the fact that the child was taken away because of the traffic offence, the question is how did social workers find out about the speeding ticket and was that a breach of data protection laws?’
Ann-Kathrin, who lives with the boy's father, Andreas, said they would have been able to manage even if her mother had gone to jail overt the unpaid ticket.
Gran Heidi said ... ‘the fine was paid within two hours but it didn't seem to make any difference. Now we're only allowed to see him once a week for an hour. The only exception was on his birthday on 26 January and we were allowed an extra hour. It has had a devastating effect on my daughter- she missed her baby's first Christmas and his first tooth. Apparently he is also now walking.'
Couldn't happen here, of course. Here it would have been worse. In Birmingham a couple claim they were reported to social services by a vengeful doctor because they dared to complain about their sick son's medical care.
Gina and Nick Ashford were terrified when their 20-month-old son had a seizure at home and quickly rushed him to hospital in Birmingham. And as medics carried out ‘aggressive’ investigations to identify the cause, they became worried about the use of a sedative which was making him repeatedly vomit. But after complaining to medics about the side effect, they claim they were then reported to social services - and an investigation into them was launched.
The couple's problems began when they questioned Alfie's treatment and asked for him to be allowed home. They claim that after becoming concerned with some measures used by the doctors to identify what was causing their son's seizure, one doctor threatened he would call police on them.
Gina, a former HSBC operations manager, added: ‘We were concerned because the medical team had carried out some aggressive investigations into Alfie's condition but hadn't come up with anything. Alfie was in a real state and when we started to object to some of the measures the consultant said he would call police. One member of staff said to us after we began raising concerns that the investigations approach was a sledgehammer to crack a nut. They were trying to sedate him so he could have an MRI scan but he kept vomiting after being given the solution. It was really chaotic and there were four people holding Alfie down. It was quite distressing to watch as a mother and we were concerned and wanted them to try an alternative method. So when they threatened us with the police, we were baffled. We were simply concerned for our son's wellbeing and only had his best interests at heart. We are good, loving parents - but we feel we were put on trial for complaining.’
The couple have since been cleared of any wrongdoing by Solihull social services, but Gina claims they are now stigmatised with the negative connotations associated with social services. She said: ‘We now have a spot light on us. Whenever we go to the hospital the first thing people ask is are you known to social services? We now have to reply yes, despite us knowing and the authorities knowing we did nothing wrong, just what every parent would do when they saw their child distressed. It is like having a criminal record that we will never shake'.
The family have now lodged an official complaint with Heart of England Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital and has launched an investigation into what happened.
There we are, just two more stories in the ongoing saga of the child protection industry's drive to control every facet of life in modern society. They really can't stand the thought, can they, that any parent might be able to function and make decisions without asking them first? There's one tiny ray of sunshine in this scandalous tale of cruelty and injustice, which is that the redoubtable Christopher Booker, the Telegraph journalist, has made it his business to speak out on behalf of children and their parents. Here's his latest article ...
Such is the reign of terror now being imposed on innocent English families by social workers that scores of parents have been fleeing with their children to Ireland to escape their clutches. I have followed a dozen such stories over the past two years, and in all of them two things stand out. One is that the English social workers seem prepared to stop at nothing to get the children back. The other is the extraordinary contrast between them and the Irish social workers, who again and again have satisfied themselves that the children are at no risk from their loving parents and are astonished by the ruthless behaviour of their English counterparts.
Several of these stories I have reported more than once and they do not have happy endings. A mother and baby were pursued to Ireland by six social workers and police, who sat in Dublin for 10 days of court hearings, until a judge ruled in their favour (with the social workers seen giving “high fives” on emerging from the court). When the mother again escaped to a remote cottage, she was violently knocked down by a policeman, so that her baby could be taken back to England.
Vicky Haigh, a former racehorse trainer, managed to escape to Ireland before her daughter was born. But then she was brought to England to be quite bizarrely punished, in a case relating to her beloved older daughter, with a three-year prison sentence – leaving her baby to be looked after in Ireland.
A 14-year-old boy lived happily with his mother in Ireland for six months until, after an equally bizarre judgment based on evidence neither he nor his mother were allowed to see, he was deported miserably back to care in England.
Last week, another such story came my way. It concerns a respectable family which was hit with disaster last summer, after the semi-autistic 8-year-old son –who tends to make things up – had lashed out at his 13-year-old sister, leaving bruises. When these were investigated, the boy told the police that his father had done it. The girl denied this – and the boy admitted in video evidence what had really happened – but the police stuck with his earlier story and arrested the father. Although he was never charged, the interventions of social workers became so menacing that, last October, the family escaped to Ireland, where the father has his roots.
There they have happily settled, and the 13-year-old daughter has become a star pupil of the local school. But the social workers eventually tracked them down – after the children’s grandmother, back in England, had been arrested by 10 police officers, handcuffed, held for three hours in a cell, and told she would be charged with perverting the course of justice unless she revealed their whereabouts. The English social workers pressed their Irish counterparts to co-operate in getting the children back to England (there are no court orders), but were told there was no reason for this because the children were in no danger.
The social workers then tried to lean on the school principal, saying that the children were “at risk of emotional harm”. The sensible headmistress gave them very short shrift, saying that the English social workers had behaved deplorably in trying to destroy a perfectly normal family, and that England’s loss was Ireland’s gain, since the girl was a brilliant pupil, who was learning five languages. Thanks to their origins, the family will soon be safely confirmed as Irish citizens.
What is striking about these stories is how often the parents emphasise the contrast between the two countries’ social workers. “In England,” says this father, “we were treated like dangerous criminals. In Ireland the social workers could not be more different, warm, friendly, treating us like human beings.” And of course it is in England that the number of children taken into care has soared to a record level, just having topped 900 a month. There is a phenomenon of group psychology here that deserves much wider attention than it is being given.
On 11th February, Booker wrote ...
... a French mother came to England last November with her three young daughters, for a brief visit to their father, from whom she is amicably separated. He lives with his 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
The day before the mother was due to return home to France with her girls, I am told that she was having a bath while the father was downstairs cutting his eldest daughter’s hair. He accidentally cut her head slightly, drawing blood, which was noticed when she arrived at school. She explained to a teacher what had happened, with the result that social workers arrived to take her into care.
The father was arrested and charged with “assault, neglect and ill-treatment”.
The mother describes how she was summoned to a police station, where she was told to sign a form she didn’t even read. This later turned out to have been a Section 20 order under the Children Act, by which parents may voluntarily put their children into care. Her girls, all under six, were taken off by social workers, and the mother was herself arrested and charged with having failed to protect the oldest girl from the “assault”, even though she was elsewhere in the house. She was given police bail and her passport was removed, so that she must remain in England at very considerable expense, to face criminal trial in April.
You can read the rest of the story here.
Back at the beginning of December 2011 Booker reported on this story ...
In one case, involving a mother who had escaped to Ireland to avoid having her unborn child seized at birth, Lord Justice Wall in September delivered a public judgement, based on his reading of two hearings by earlier judges, whose judgements he ordered to be published. They have still not appeared.
Recently, the mother returned from Ireland, leaving her baby behind, to face criminal charges which she imagined were so odd that she would be acquitted. Instead she was remanded in custody by magistrates, to await trial in the new year. Until then she must remain in prison, separated from her seven-month-old child.
The husband and wife in a second case, whose children were removed last year, recently appeared before Lord Justice Wall, after dozens of hearings in the family courts – never with proper legal representation, up against a whole battery of lawyers bent on keeping their children from them. On leaving court at the end of the latest hearing before Wall, they were arrested and sent to separate prisons. Last week they were charged in a magistrates’ court with a string of criminal offences and are also being held on remand without bail.
Thus all three parents, separated from the children they love, are now in cells, on charges against which they have not yet had the chance to defend themselves. The only advantage of this is that these people will at least be appearing in criminal courts, where they may at last be legally represented, and where evidence can be tested according to the very different rules that apply in such courts, where evidence based on assertion and hearsay is not normally allowed.
The rest of that story here.
And here are Booker's comments on a story we carried some time ago about the Indian couple whose children were snatched by Norwegian social workers because they were allowed to sleep in their parents' bed and eat with their hands (as probably 80% of the world does).
On 10th December 2011 Booker described ...
... an anguished Russian mother who recently escaped to Germany with her young son, because British social workers were threatening to take the boy into care. Until last month, they lived happily together here, but one evening the mother, temporarily depressed for work reasons, poured out her troubles to a stranger she met in a park. Next day, this well-meaning lady contacted the local social workers, hoping they might be able to help the family. Within hours, social workers were at the house, coldly suggesting that it might be best for them to draw up a “care plan”.
Alarmed at their tone, the mother fled with her son, to stay with her mother in Germany. In her absence she was summoned to court and threatened that, unless she brought her son back, her assets might be seized (she owns a house) and she might even be imprisoned.
On arriving in Germany, she had contacted the local social workers, who saw that the boy was happy and in good care. Their English counterparts, though, are now talking of going to Germany to arrange for him to be brought back to England. The mother would love to bring him back herself, if only this mess could be sorted out in a sensible fashion. But she is terrified that if she returns she will be put in prison.
Read the rest here.
Finally at the risk of being boring, can we remind you all of the story that sparked our interest in and concern about the evil machinations of the Family Courts and the social workers who use them to bully and persecute innocent people?
It was, and is, a truly dreadful sequence of events and, as Booker says, it didn't end well. Through no fault of their own, the Hardinghams from North Norfolk lost three of their four children who were stolen away and sent for adoption – and adoption, as you probably know, is irreversible.
Read about it here.
If you're hard enough.
Oh, one more thing: first person who writes and says “It's worth it if we save the life of just one child”, or “social workers are damned if they do, damned if they don't”, gets a packet of dog shit through their letterbox for being so thick they can only think in clichés. As we find ourselves saying more and more often these days, why go to all the trouble of getting things wrong when it's so easy to get them right?
Sorry. Common-sense overload.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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