A solicitor who snatched his baby
from two care workers before going on the run has been jailed for 20 months.
Jonathan Phillips, 40, punched the two women, one of whom was heavily
pregnant, before grabbing his daughter and speeding away in his car.
The child had been taken into care because of concerns over his wife's mental
health - although the couple insist she does not present a risk.
They were allowed to visit their daughter for two hours every day at a family
contact centre in King's Lynn, Norfolk. But Phillips lashed out because he
felt staff were treating her too roughly.
He shouted, "Take your hands off my baby" before overturning a table,
attacking the women and seizing his child, who was four months old at the
time.
Phillips, a soldier in the Territorial Army, fled with his wife Erica and the
child, who cannot be named for legal reasons. They were stopped on the M6 near
Birmingham later the same day.
Phillips, of Downham Market, Norfolk, was sent to prison after admitting
kidnap and two charges of assault causing actual bodily harm.
Before he was sentenced he said: "I was acting under extreme provocation.
Social services had taken our baby into care under dubious circumstances and
whenever we visited her, the staff handled her roughly, overfed her and
generally ill-treated her.
"I lashed out in the heat of the moment. I could see my family crumbling
before me.
"Now the tragedy is that she looks set to be adopted and we will not be able
to see her again until she is 18."
Norwich
Crown Court heard that Norfolk County Council gained an interim care order in
May to place the child in foster care because of Mrs Phillips's mental health.
The couple say they have independent evidence showing she was capable of
looking after her baby.
Mark Shelley, defending, said Phillips was "a well respected and popular
solicitor".
"It was not a planned snatch," he said. "It was a culmination of emotions as
he could see his daughter slipping away from him."
The court heard the two care workers suffered cuts and bruises during the
attack in August.
Phillips was jailed on Tuesday for 12 months for kidnap and eight months to
run consecutively for the assaults.
"These are extremely serious charges and I cannot see them in any other
light," Judge Paul Downes told him.
Mrs Phillips, a qualified cardiology nurse, said afterwards that staff at the
contact centre were rude and would go out of their way to upset them. She
added: 'My husband is a decent man and a kind and loving father and had no
criminal convictions before this.'
Norfolk County Council said the sentence sent out a strong message that
violence against its staff was unacceptable.
Comment by Fassit UK Correspondent
It is worth noting that the slightest challenge by parents, to social workers,
is deemed violence. In the ' Essex low IQ case', Justice Pauffley released the
2 children for adoption on 8 August 2005 and one reason given in the judgment,
was ' the violence that the mother had inflicted on a social worker', at a
contact centre, when the mother was visiting the children, who were then in
Care.
The mother assured me that all she had done was in a fit of exasperation, she
had pulled the social worker's hair, to get her out of the way, because the
mother was trying to take a photograph of her baby, just before she was
leaving the care centre, and the social worker kept getting in the way.
Apparently the police had also been informed of this 'grave incident'.
I decided to follow this up.
The parents and I contacted Brentwood Police and Clacton Police( where the
children were at the time of the incident) and asked for a copy of the
recorded details. The police confirmed the recorded Incident Number, in
writing to us........But there was almost nothing on it....The incident, far
far being ' violent' was reported a month later, in the nature of an after
thought, to tie in with the allegations the social worker had made.....There
were no witnesses, no paramedics or nurses were called, no hospital
appointment made for the ' supposedly injured social worker......The report
was an incident that was no more than a 'shove out of the way'.......But on
the back of such an allegation, the parents had lost their children, to
adoption.
Do bear this in mind as you consider the case of the unfortunate solicitor
above.
The villains are the social workers in these situations and the Guligans
within this evil empire of darkness, who are concealing the truth, so that
their 'business & industry' can continue.
And even if there parents on these occasions resort to violence; what is it in
our justice code that requires the punishment to be the loss of the
children......FOR LIFE?
Such barbaric punishment doesn't
happen in any other society, let alone a supposed civilised society....How is
it that the UK Government and its SS ( Social Service ) Storm troopers are
allowed to get away with this?.....isn't it time this was exposed on the world
stage.
Fassit UK Correspondent
Jack Frost
author of 'The Gulag of the Family Courts'
http://www.gulagofthefamilycourts.com/
