Monday, 23 April 2012 07:27
‘Millions have been shocked by Friday’s story of the London couple who were charged, on flawed medical evidence, with having shaken their four-month-old son to death. The charges against the parents were dropped at the Old Bailey last December, but it was only last week that they finally won his sister back from social workers still determined to hold on to her.
The reporting of this tragic case lifts a tiny corner of that veil of secrecy which has long hidden a crucial and disturbing flaw of our child protection system. This is the way that doctors are far too ready to report to social workers that children have probably been physically abused, and the readiness of family courts to endorse those suspicions on medical evidence which is not put properly to the test. All the indications are that hundreds of families are torn apart each year for similarly dubious reasons which never come to light.’
Read more: In Family Courts, ‘Experts’ are Paid to Get it Horribly Wrong