THE cousin of a paedophile left court in tears after a
judge quashed her last ditch bid to become the legal guardian of his
18-month-old daughter.
The baby girl, known
only as "B" for legal reasons, is the child of an illegal affair between a
man in his mid-thirties - who is currently in jail - and a girl who was aged
just 14 when she gave birth.
Both families are
desperate to hang on to "B", but were told at a London Appeal Court on
Tuesday, December 20, that the order made by a judge at Reading County Court
in October to free the child for adoption will not be reversed.
The young mother, who
wanted to become the baby's full-time carer, said: "We are all so frustrated
and annoyed. We feel discriminated against.
"No one came to assess
us as a family unit and see whether we could give the child a safe
upbringing and keep her parents from seeing her.
"We are more than
willing to exclude her father from the family.
"I've never had to
speak to social services in my life and I didn't query anything or ask any
questions. But the end result is that the child is going to suffer and our
family is going to suffer.
"Later in life she's
going to have unanswered questions."
Summing up, Lord
Justice Moore-Bick said there were 'no guarantees' the woman would be able
to keep the little girl's father from disrupting her life on his release.
He said: "The father
has an assertive personality and is often an aggressive man, whose wishes
can be difficult to deny.
"The applicant is a
good mother, but the judge had to take an overall view of what was best for
the child and inevitably that meant disappointing some of those who were
willing to take care of her and no doubt would have brought her up perfectly
satisfactorily.
"But in my view, there
are no grounds for criticising the judge's decision and this application is
refused."
However, Lord Justice
Moore-Bick paid tribute to the young mother when he told the court she 'will
be bitterly disappointed' by the decision. But that when she 'looks back
with pain at the loss to the family she can always tell herself that she
fought as hard as she could'.
The mother left the
courts in floods of tears and was comforted by other family members waiting
outside.
