[666maslo666]

I can think of some reasons why the forced c-section could have been justified. But not holding a foreign baby and putting it up for adoption against the wish of the mother..

[MP-Ryan]

I suspect she was assigned a lawyer, but without her able to instruct him, there's few arguments to be made against an established court procedure (whether that procedure is a good one or not is a different discussion, of course).

When an advocate is appointed and cannot be instructed by a client in more adversarial rights-based countries, their mandate is to oppose basically all interventions proposed by the plaintiff unless in the best interests of their appointed client.  If that doesn't happen in Britain's extraordinarily powerful child welfare courts, it should.

What's frightening here is that it doesn't appear the courts are simply ordering the child continue to be placed in foster care arrangements, where a biological parent maintains some rights and there is the possibility of them regaining custody; here, they are looking to adoption, which is a permanent transfer of parental rights.  If the child is adopted out, the biological mother loses all rights to the child, including potentially even communication and visitation.  Nothing like further victimizing the mentally ill "for the children!"

[Lorric]

What seems strange to me is that, after 5 weeks, no-one had even managed to find relatives, confirm her nationality, or even more strangely, no-one had reported her missing? Something weird is going on here, but I really don't know what percentage is incompetence on the part of the services, and which percentage was reluctance to give information on the part of the woman.

Maybe she's too ill to divulge such information. It's also possible nobody cares, or even that she's the only one left of her family.

[Flipside]

@MPRyan : I'm not an expert at any level on UK Law, but as I understand a court order, it is a proposal to perform an action based on evidence provided by both sides and decided upon by a Judge, not a Jury. They are for matters that are not 'crimes' but are too serious to be dealt with at a Magistrate level.

If the defense lawyer is unable to produce evidence to state why the actions of this woman are not cause to place the child into some kind of protection, then the Judge will have little choice than to rule in favour of the adoption. The thing that doesn't work here is how no-one realized that this system does not apply to foreign nationals because this is not a criminal matter, and so there was no right to remove a child from a non-national.

@Lorric : A few days, I could understand it, but 5 weeks and no-one looked at her passport, or at least didn't notice it was an Italian one? That strikes me as very odd.

[Lorric]

@Lorric : A few days, I could understand it, but 5 weeks and no-one looked at her passport, or at least didn't notice it was an Italian one? That strikes me as very odd.

Well, the whole thing is very odd, isn't it. It's certainly an interesting case, and with the truth seemingly set to come out in time, I'll certainly be interested to see how all the missing pieces of this jigsaw fit into place if they are found.

[MP-Ryan]

If the defense lawyer is unable to produce evidence to state why the actions of this woman are not cause to place the child into some kind of protection, then the Judge will have little choice than to rule in favour of the adoption.

If that is true, the child protection systems in the UK Courts are placing the burden of proof not on the system, but on the biological parent.  I sincerely hope that's not the case.

[Phantom Hoover]

The UK child protection systems have been through the media wringer several times in recent years for failing to intervene in time to save vulnerable children; I could believe that the legal framework behind this mess is a reaction to that.

[Flipside]

If the defense lawyer is unable to produce evidence to state why the actions of this woman are not cause to place the child into some kind of protection, then the Judge will have little choice than to rule in favour of the adoption.

If that is true, the child protection systems in the UK Courts are placing the burden of proof not on the system, but on the biological parent.  I sincerely hope that's not the case.

I think it's more a question of, when you are a Judge placed in front of two sets of people, one set are people from a professional background stating that the child will be at risk if left with the mother, and on the other is a lawyer who can say 'I'm sorry your Honor, but my Client has been been unable to instruct me on this matter', you are left in the unenviable position of making a decision for two people who are unable to speak for themselves, the mother and the baby, and the ONLY information you have is a statement from professional bodies. Whether the Judge was correct to follow that professional advice is really a roll of the dice in these cases.

I do agree, however, that Fostering would have been the more sensible course to take.

[StarSlayer]

Still seems terribly odd for the UK to be making the decisions for a foreign national's child, especially if said foreign national is incapable of making any informed input on the matter.  Next of kin should have been involved or barring that, the mother, child and decision should have been handed over to her country of origin to handle.  From the information so far in the thread this seems to have been horribly mishandled. 

[karajorma]

Right now I think everyone is loudly trumpeting their views with no actual facts to base them on. It would be much smarter for all concerned to wait until there are more details to base our views off of. 

[Flipside]

I also think we can rest assured that, no matter what happens, it isn't some plan in the UK Machinations to steal foreign babies either, we're still struggling to get large swathes of society to come to terms with those we invited

[StarSlayer]

Smarter, but what a boring musical piece without the brass.



 

[Colonol Dekker]

Right now I think everyone is loudly trumpeting their views with no actual facts to base them on. It would be much smarter for all concerned to wait until there are more details to base our views off of. 

I'm almost certain that the social workers wield more clout than solicitors at this point.  Lawyers don't exist in the UK and family law is meticulous in this county. My level is redundant in fact.

[karajorma]

Quite a few more details in this article.

Of particular intrests.

Essex council said on Monday it "liaised extensively" with the extended family over the baby's future care, that Italian courts ruled in May the child should stay in England and that it obtained permission from the county court to place her in adoption in October. The mother had two other children which she was unable to care for due to orders by the Italian authorities.

I suspected all along that at least half of those things would come to light once we had more facts.

[666maslo666]

More details:

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2013/20.html

The father is an illegal immigrant in Italy.

[Flipside]

Now we know what happened with regards to the relatives at least.

Thing is, I have seen something similar before, bi-polar is a condition that does tend to make people paranoid and it can affect the way people remember things in order to feed that paranoia, which was why I had a feeling it might all turn out to have been authorised after all. In fact, I just noticed the court document actually mentions her having 'paranoid delusions' as part of her condition.

It's a tragic story on reading through it, but it does look like everything was done through the right channels at least.

[MP-Ryan]

*boggle*  OK, I just read both the Guardian article (which is pretty scant on detail) and Judge Newton's decision (which fortunately isn't).

Essex council said on Monday it "liaised extensively" with the extended family over the baby's future care, that Italian courts ruled in May the child should stay in England

Interesting.  Because Judge Newton's ruling makes zero reference to an Italian court decision, and the only details on the Italian courts came not from the Guardian (who offers the vague statement above), but from the Telegraph, which referred to an Italian court finding that the challenge failed on procedural grounds (e.g. was filed too late).

Nevertheless, Judge Newton's decision makes it clear that a council in the UK is applying UK law to the citizen of a foreign country - who wants her child back - and that citizen's daughter.  The hypocrisy here is unbelievable; there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the UK would be good with these precise circumstances if it was a bipolar British woman having her child adopted-away in Italy.  I note, with particular outrage, this:

But the mother had been later been "dispatched (indeed escorted) from the UK with undue haste", Newton said. By going to Italy, "any realistic prospect of P returning to her care was diminished substantially".

So why exactly were Italy's child protection authorities not contacted and the child escorted out of the country too?  Anyone care to explain that?  Anyone?  Bueller?

It is unfortunate that the mother does not come from a country with a better-established system of rights and citizen protections than Italy (indeed, Italy has a piss-poor record of protecting its citizenry, and is particularly bad when ethnic minorities are involved see: Roma).  If the UK authorities tried this with a citizen of a more prominent democracy with entrenched constitutional protections they would be facing an international ****storm.

It is quote possible that this woman shouldn't have custody of her child.  However, that is not a decision for the authorities or UK courts to make.  The idea that a temporary international visitor to the UK - by all accounts a purported rights-based democracy - can have their rights suspended, their child taken, and then adopted out all within the UK itself is a complete anathema to the sanctity of international citizenship law.

EDIT:  Some more on this at the BBC:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-25204276

EDIT:  And it's now hit major media in both US and Canada, where there is predictable outrage similar to my own.

EDIT:  And once again, the Telegraph out-does both the Guardian and the BBC on details.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10492936/Caesarean-case-mother-Im-suffering-like-an-animal.html

[Ghostavo]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10492936/Caesarean-case-mother-Im-suffering-like-an-animal.html

The incident has thrown the spotlight on activities of the Court of Protection, the branch of the High Court with powers to make life and death decisions about vulnerable people in private and send people to prison in secret for breaching its orders. MPs have also voiced alarm at the issues exposed by the case.

What exactly is the Court of Protection and what has happened before?

[Flipside]

A rather over-dramatically described version of the Court where Social Services, the NHS, the Police and vulnerable people in extreme situations for whatever reason meet to sort things out, often in situations where the vulnerable person is considered unable to speak for themselves clearly. They are supposed to assign a representative to these people in order to support them and put their case forward.

It's one of those damned if you win, damned if you lose places, where everyone is mostly out just to minimize the damage, rather than find a 'solution'. Pretty much like this whole situation, and neither side seems to be giving a full or accurate account of what is going on here.

Edit: And just to clarify, it is mostly for people who wish to apply to become a deputy to someone, so that they make all financial, health and housing decisions, it's one step beyond a carer where you have legal responsibility for that person, as it suggests, enforced adoption would fall under this blanket. The 'sending a person to prison' thing is, I can only assume, the cases of enforced confinement in a mental institution which are always going to be contentious, nothing else comes to mind.

[karajorma]

One thing which has failed to be made clear is why are we only hearing about this now, after 15 months?

Cause I can see a pretty strong argument that if the case only came up now that the child should remain in the home it's accustomed to.

Basically I don't think this is as big a WTF as people want to make out. While I might not agree with it, it does appear to be a bunch of small decisions (some of them wrong in hindsight but perfectly valid at the time) which have added up to situation which looks wrong. Questions are being asked like "Why wasn't the father involved" but did the people involved know who the father was at the time? It's pretty easy to see how circumstances could have resulted in this mess.