Family Court Injustice

Dear Ministry of Justice,

1: It must surely be the right of parents and anyone else in a
democratic country wishing to complain against injustice to go to
the media with details of everything that happened to them in the
family court Most judges in family courts refuse leave to appeal
and solicitors always back them up so the idea of appealing when
leave has been denied is nearly always a "non starter". Parents are
at present denied their democratic right to (like rape victims)
shed anonymity and then go to the media under their own names to
get public and political support followed by possible reform! How
can this be justice?

2: Harriet Harman,(minister of state, Department of constitutional
affairs )said in Parliament "Last year something like 200 people
were sent to prison by the family courts, which happens in complete
privacy and secrecy."

Surely those who still deny these facts cannot believe she was
lying to Parliament! How can imprisonment with no public process be
justice?

3: Extract from The Times, Aug 23 2007: "Emotional abuse" has no
strict definition in British law. Yet it now accounts for an
astounding 21 per cent of all children registered as needing
protection, up from 14 per cent in 1997. Last year 6,700 children
were put on the child protection register for emotional abuse,
compared with only 2,600 for sexual abuse and 5,100 for physical
abuse.

How can taking newborn babies for "risk of emotional abuse"
possibly be justified when the effect is to punish parents and
abuse their babies not for anything they have done but for
something that some hired prophet thinks they might perhaps do in
the future. How can this be justice?

4: Any burglar facing a prison sentence of 6 months or more can
demand a hearing before a jury so how can it be right or just that
parents who risk losing their children for life to "forced
adoption" are denied this option. Juries consider complicated
medical evidence in cases such as murder, and compensation for
injuries, also complicated tax laws in cases of fraud, and insider
dealing. The simple decision whether a mother accused of risk of
emotional abuse should keep her newborn baby or not would I think
we must all agree be more likely to favour the mother if considered
by a jury but records show that such cases nearly always favour the
social services if decided by a judge. That is probably why juries
are banned from the family courts but allowed to decide libel cases
in other civil courts! To take a newborn baby from its mother and
give it away for adoption by strangers is a far far worse
punishment for her than any jail sentence as it condemns the mother
to a life sentence and the baby to probable death later in life if
it should require a kidney or bone marrow transplant or other
medical attention in which a birth family member was needed but
could not be located! How can this be justice?

Yours faithfully,

James Moore

Dear Data Access & Compliance Unit,

According to statute, your reply to this FOI request is now
overdue. Please forward this request to the Information Controller
and/or internal reviewing officer.

Yours sincerely,

James Moore