Fassit’s response
to ‘Confidence & Confidentiality: Openness in Family Court – new approach’….June
2007. Presented by Lord Chancellor (Lord Falconer) Secretary of State for
Justice.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/consult-family-courts.pdf
Is this another ‘dodgy dossier’?
So we waited from
October 2005 and have had two supposed ‘public consultations’, which each
deferred a decision to bring in openness & transparency into a court of law,
which has been forcibly taking children away from parents, in secret and
casting them into the sink industry of care and adoption.
This, after Harriet
Harman MP. QC, the Minister of State for the Department of Constitutional
Affairs (the minister with overall responsibility for the Family Courts)
announced in a number of articles she personally had published in national
newspapers that, “It is impossible to defend the system from accusations
of bias and discrimination, if it operates behind closed doors ……something has
to be seen, to be believed and justice has to be seen to be done….the Family
Courts are more secret than prisons.” (Mail on Sunday … 4 June 2006
link)
……
And Justice Munby, High Court Judge, Family Division, in a debate with members
of Parliament, chaired by the Hon. Sir Mark Potter
(President. Family Division
of High Court Judges), on 3 May 2006, in which he stated “ I have to say
that it seems quite indefensible that there should be no access by the media and no access by the public to what is going on in courts where judges are
day-by- day taking peoples children away.”
Lord Falconer, The
Lord Chancellor (overall charge of all the judicial systems in the UK) announced
on 20 June 2007, that as a result of the ‘public consultation’, there was
to be no openness & transparency in the Family Courts. Indeed, they are to stay
hermetically sealed and get even more secretive.
Let us look at the
reasons given by Lord Falconer, for his decision to ban the media and the public
from access to Family Court cases. Bearing in mind, reporting of cases with an
exact equivalence, with perhaps even more personal detail and including serious
sexual and physical violence and debauchery, has been routine in all other
courts in the UK, with the caveat that the identities of the victimised children
and the perpetrators, if also under the age of 16, have always been protected
from disclosure and only certain specific segments of the case, have been held
in camera.( in the absence of the press and the public)
The picture of a
smiling Lord Falconer, introduced his reasons for not giving the media the
automatic right to attend Family Courts. He states that he arrived at his
decision not to allow the media access as of right, “ after receiving formal
responses from individuals and organisations including the views of over 200
children, half of whom had experience of care proceedings.”
On a closer
examination it appears that Lord Falconer might have been economical with the
truth. We know that the ‘organisations’ are the social workers, lawyers,
judges, adoption and fostering agencies and charities. All these are nose down
and elbows flaying at the trough of limitless public funding, without an iota of
independent scrutiny. The presence of the media would put a stop to this
financial jamboree and many believe is also likely to result in prosecutions for
fraud. One can therefore accept without any fear of disagreement, that those
within the secret industry; those I refer to as ‘the Guligans’ in my
book, “ The Gulag Of The Family Courts”, would find the presence of the
media, intolerable and would have informed Lord Falconer in those terms.
There are
suspicions that ‘the organisations’ referred to, is the secret industry
and it has made it known that if the media were allowed access, they would down
tools and withdraw their participation. One wonders if this has any merit!
What is very
concerning is his statement “after receiving formal responses from
individuals and organisations including the views of over 200 children, half of
whom had experience of care proceedings.”
How did Lord
Falconer learn about the views of the “over 200 children, half of whom had
experience of care proceedings?”
1……..During the
‘public consultation process’, the Department of Constitutional Affairs,
when questioned about the facilities that were to be utilised to get the opinion
of children, stated that the views of the children would be ascertained by the
children telephoning/e-mailing the DCA to register their opinions and views,
concerning admitting the press, media and the public.
(a)……..The DCA then
stated that to carry out this proposal in 1 above, the DCA was going to install
a dedicated telephone line and a dedicated e-mail address, for the sole purpose
of receiving views and opinions from the children.
( b) ……The DCA was
reminded, that those at the receiving end of the children’s opinions, in the
DCA, would need to be cleared by the Family Courts to receive information about
their cases, before they could invite disclosure of information about their
cases.
( c)…….The DCA was
reminded, that there would have to be a system and protocols to ensure that
those using the dedicated lines of communication to the DCA were in fact genuine
identifiable children, and not adults posing as children. They would have also
to be checked out that they had the experience of Family Court proceedings,
that has been claimed for them.
(d)……How did Lord
Falconer know that ‘half of them had experience of care proceedings’? How
could this be ascertained in a ‘phone call and/or an e-mail? What proof can Lord
Falconer refer to, to justify the statement?
(e)……Two days
before the ‘public consultation process’ expired, I contacted the DCA and
requested information that would confirm that ( a ) ( b) & ( c) had been
addressed. I was informed that there had been no protocols put in place to
ensure the integrity of the responses of the children. There was doubt about (
a) and it was confirmed to me , that ( b) and ( c) had not been addressed.
So how did Lord
Falconer come to make the statement concerning the children’s responses? If I am
correct, this is a very serious issue and this needs to be raised in Parliament.
Unless Lord Falconer can answer ( a), (b) and (c) and support the answers with
proof, this would indicate he has either been deliberately misled or he is
involved in misleading the public and Parliament. Is this another ‘doggy
dossier’?
If the DCA left the
survey of the children’s opinions to the social workers, their lawyers, the
adoption and fostering agencies, the agencies with their labyrinthine
connections to local government and the industry dependant on the present system
of unscrutinised and unaccountable public funding; the result could have been
predicted, without the charade of a ‘public consultation’.
So where is the
supporting documentation that would give credence to the claim that over 200
children were consulted?
"And why were the
parents voices so obviously ignored? Was the ‘public consultation’ intended
solely for the ‘organisations‘ involved with the Family Courts and the
‘mysterious’ children, only?"
And if the opinions
of children and babies counted for so much, why has Lord Falconer now embarked
on another ‘public consultation’? Wouldn’t it save a lot of time and just
go and ask the babies and children. Why all this ‘spin’ and subterfuge?,
He could avoid the charade and admit that those dependant on this secret
industry are petrified of the media beholding just what has been taking place in
the Gulag of the Family Courts.
And what you might
ask has been taking place in the Family Courts?
1…….False evidence
has been routinely provided by social workers and other ‘public officials ’,
in order to take children into care and have them adopted, thus meeting
government targets, and providing rewards, including financial rewards, for the
local authority and its employees.
In a number of these cases, the
‘public officials’ have been paid staggeringly huge fees from the public
pot, for documents that could easily be shown to be incorrect and/or fraudulent,
but there has been no way for those involved to be identified, for this to be
publicised and for prosecutions to follow.
2…….The secrecy has
allowed the identity of some of the ’public officials’ giving false
evidence in the Family Courts, their criminal past or their professional
misdemeanours, to remain hidden and contribute to serious miscarriages of
justice.
3……..The secrecy
has allowed the rampant ‘conflicts of interest’ involving local
government officials (social workers come within the group of local government
officials) to run riot. Unlike members of Parliament and elected councillors,
local government officials are not required by law to complete a ‘register of
interests’. This has allowed social workers and senior officials in the
child care departments of local authorities, to have documented interests in the
foster care agencies and adoption agencies with whom they deal. These same
senior local authority officials are then able to set policy, decide on
procedures and agree the purchase of goods and services from the very
agencies/charities they are officially linked with. This also feeds into meeting
government targets and even surpassing the targets, whilst not revealing this
serious ‘conflict of interests’. If a commercial company were to be
guilty of such conduct, they would be prosecuted for fraud and probably jailed.
This serious
‘conflict of interests’ is then utilised away from the court in ensuring
that legitimate questions from members of the public are not answered and could
even result in the questioner being falsely accused of harassing the local
authority, for persisting with the questions. For example, Essex County Council
has refused to answer the following questions:
(a) ……In how many
of the cases of children adopted from out of the council’s own care- pool since
1997, have the adopters been local government officials or ex- local government
officials?
( b)……Since 2000,
what are the names and addresses of those local government officials and/or
their close relatives who whilst still employed by the council, or since
leaving, have been awarded contracts by the council in relation to providing
foster care and/or adoption agency services to the council?
( c)…….What is the
analysis of payments made to those referred to in (b) above ?
(d)……..On how many
occasions since 1997 have injunctions been used by the council against members
of the public and elected councillors, to silence and intimidate them, in
relation to child care issues.? How many of these cases resulted in
imprisonment? How many were mothers and how many were juveniles aged under 17?
Further questions
yet to be asked but which judging on past performance would not be answered are
the following:
(e) ……In how many
of the cases of adoption from the council’s own care- pool, have the children
been adopted into another faith, to meet adoption targets? In other words; how
many Catholics have been adopted by couples of other faiths or no faith, and how
many Muslims have been adopted by Hindus, for example?
(f) …..In how many
of the cases of those imprisoned for breaching the secrecy of the Family Court
proceedings, did the mothers who were imprisoned, attempt or commit suicide,
whilst in prison or within a few years after being released from prison?
4…….Contrary to
what some judges have been informing Parliament and the press, there is ample
evidence of a number of ‘secret trials’ at which members of the public
have been losing their freedom, Yes! They have been tried in secret and
jailed. In these cases, the judges avoid the word ‘prosecution’ and
substitute the word ‘application’. So the respondent (not the defendant)
faces a ‘committal hearing’, as a result of ‘an application’ made
to the court’….Very Clever!
( This after
Harriet Harman MP QC admitted in a Parliamentary reply to Sally Keeble MP (
Northampton North) on 13 June 2006, that 200 persons were sent to prison after
‘secret trials’, in the previous year. Though in a democracy, we are not
supposed to lose our freedoms without a trial in an open court, in which the
press have access. This is indeed a strange democracy. Perhaps the learned Lord
Chancellor will explain how this is achieved by this Labour Government)
…END…
Fassit UK Correspondent
Jack Frost
author of 'The Gulag of the Family Courts...Book1'
ISBN 9 781430 316350
http://www.gulagofthefamilycourts.com/
Please read...
Public awards for dishonourable conduct
Why social workers remove babies from their mothers
Grandmother faces year in prison
Confidentiality and Openness in Family Court
Fassit response to BASW
Adoptions cannot ever be undone?
DCA Phoney Conciliations
New DCA announcement - Social Workers
Harriet Harman the Response
The Labyrinthine links of the 'Little Hitlers'
Open or shut case - NO
The Political Social Workers
Time limits for Compensation in Child Abuse Cases
Adoption Fraud is under challenge
