COMMENTARY: "Why are some parents still unfairly losing their children to adoption?" by Dr. James Le Fanu, published by The Telgraph on Octoner 19, 2015.
GIST:
"Just over 10 years ago,
Cassandra Jardine in an article in this
newspaper (
“Children are taken away but the system won’t admit
it’s wrong”) described how local councils were achieving their
adoption “targets” by forcibly removing children from parents
convicted, on the basis of disputed medical theories, of having
deliberately caused their injuries. “The pain these parents suffer is
hard to overestimate” she wrote. These sentiments were echoed last week by
Karrissa Cox and Richard Carter, who lost their
child to adoption in the family courts only to be subsequently
exonerated in the criminal courts. .. It would be good to think there would by now be a greater awareness
of the potential for this type of miscarriage of justice in the
family courts but, if anything, the difficulty parents confront in
proving their innocence is greater than a decade ago – and on two
counts. First, it has become considerably harder to obtain legal aid.
And second, the medical experts whose scientific investigations
challenge the current assumption that certain patterns of head injury
and bony fractures are “characteristic” of child abuse have been
vexatiously accused of providing misleading evidence in the courts. They include Dr Waney Squier of Oxford University, whose testimony
in the past has contributed to the exoneration of many couples just
like Karrissa Cox and Richard Carter. There is no difficulty in
imagining what the late Cassandra Jardine would make of this grievous situation.
The entire commentary can be found at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wellbeing/health-advice/parents-adoption-children-courts-family-james-le-fanu/
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