Paedophile's child left with 'unanswered questions'


Paedophile's child left with 'unanswered questions' By Mark Coleman Dec 30 2005 Source: Local Berkshire 'We are all so frustrated and annoyed. We feel discriminated against' 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.
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