Essex Social Workers Dope Mother To Steal Her Baby
IS anywhere safe from suspicious glares of social workers? No. In Essex, a woman has had her baby removed form her womb. Essex social service thought it a good idea to take the child from her mother’s womb by caesarean section
The baby snatchers went in armed with a High Court order. The mother, an Italian in the UK for a training course at Ryanair in Standsted, had suffered a mental breakdown brought on, her relatives believe, by her failure to take medication for her bi-polar condition. The panicking woman had called the police from her hotel room. They arrived when she was speaking to her mother. The older woman told police about her daughter’s condition.
They would ltake her to a hospital. But they took her to a psychiatric ward.
For five weeks she was imprisoned on a secure ward, sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
The social workers never told her they were going to take her baby. Meanwhile, the law said she could be forcibly sedated. She was. They strapped her down, The baby was cut out of her. For her own good. For her health and peace of mind.
That was 15 months ago. The child remains in the care of the State. The mother wants her back. But the State won’t ket go.
In October 2012, she stood before the judge. Her legal representatives were lawyers assigned to her by the local authority. The judge told her she told she would be escorted back to Italy without her baby.
She then began to fight back.
In February 2013, she arrived back in The UK to for the hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court. The judge weighed up the facts. And he ruled that the child must be adopted.
None of the woman’s kin in Italy were consulted. The judge ruled that a willing aunt – her step-father’s sister – America could not look after the girl. The judge said they were not blood relations. So. Tough luck. Better she live with total strangers. Better she never see her true mother.
Until the child is adopted, the mother has a chance.
The woman’s lawyer Brendan Fleming, tells the Telegraph: “I have never heard of anything like this in all my 40 years in the job. I can understand if someone is very ill that they may not be able to consent to a medical procedure, but a forced caesarean is unprecedented. If there were concerns about the care of this child by an Italian mother, then the better plan would have been for the authorities here to have notified social services in Italy and for the child to have been taken back there.”
John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the Public Family Law Reform Coordinating Campaign, is not pleased: “I have seen a number of cases of abuses of people’s rights in the family courts, but this has to be one of the more extreme. It involves the Court of Protection authorising a caesarean section without the person concerned being made aware of what was proposed. I worry about the way these decisions about a person’s mental capacity are being taken without any apparent concern as to the effect on the individual being affected.”
Note: Helpfully, the Essex County Council runs a website whereby children adopted out can locate their parents.
Many adults who were adopted as children wish to find out more about the circumstances of their adoption and in some cases attempt to trace members of their birth family. Depending on the date you were adopted, different procedures apply…
Before deciding whether to give the information, the adoption social worker will consider your welfare and all the circumstances of your adoption. Should you wish to trace a birth relative, the welfare and wishes of the person you want to contact must also be considered.
Why wait?
Posted: 2nd, December 2013 | In: Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
