A tiny piece of Christmas cheer for one family, anyway …
A couple whose children were taken from them for two years ago by social services after falsely being accused of sexual abuse have been awarded a six-figure compensation payout. Tim and Gina Williams went through a 'total nightmare' of having their three young children placed in separate foster homes after being wrongly placed under suspicion by social workers.
The couple's ordeal began after Mr Williams discovered an 11-year-old boy, semi-naked and on top of his daughter, Courtney, then aged five, following a neighbourhood paddling pool party staged at their house. Mr Williams called police, but a medical examination carried out as part of the subsequent examination resulted in social services stepping in. A doctor who examined the child claimed she had been the victim of abuse by an adult, possibly using an implement.
As a result, social services judged Mrs Williams to also pose a potential risk to Courtney and her elder siblings Zara and Ieuan, and the children were taken away in August 2004. Their parents were allowed just two 90-minutes supervised visits per week, at a neutral venue.
The family, from Newport, South Wales, were reunited two years ago after a High Court judge exonerated the parents, who then began a compensation battle against Newport City Council and Royal Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust. They were yesterday awarded an undisclosed sum in an agreed settlement at the High Court in Cardiff.
Mrs.Williams said none of the children "can bear to have us out of their sight because they think we won't come back. They believe they were taken into care because we didn't love or want them any more."
Mr.Williams added "All three are extra clingy and constantly fight for our attention. If they don't see us at the school gates the moment the bell rings they freak out, so we have to get there 10 minutes early and stand in exactly the same spot. We take them everywhere with us because they refuse to go to babysitters. But whenever we see the children angry or in tears, we have to remember that it's not their fault. They were ripped from us and still don't understand why".
Police and social services turned up at their home during the school summer holidays and demanded the children be handed over, or they would come back with a court order. "It was mad," he said. "We didn't know what was going on. Social services weren't telling us anything. There were all these meetings behind closed doors and decisions being made without us being consulted. The children were crying because they didn't know what was going on. All they knew was that they were being removed from the house."
The couple refused to let them take the children, but, after agonising over their plight, agreed to do so a few days later at a pre-arranged meeting at the social services offices. The couple were banned from discussing the ongoing investigation with their children, so they told the trio they were going on a little holiday. As they walked out of the social services office, they heard their children screaming "Mummy! Daddy!"
The case against the parents eventually collapsed a week before a final court hearing, after the family consulted an American doctor, an expert in the field, who found there was no suggestion of any sexual abuse. A UK doctor gave a second opinion which agreed with the US medic. The original doctor who examined Courtney then accepted their findings. Newport council asked for the case to be dropped and the children were returned to their parents in September 2006. The High Court was told at the time that initial evidence against the family was collected by a doctor using outdated practices to examine the girl.
There isn't likely to be a happy ending for three of Mark and Nicky Webster's children, because Norfolk County Council have already had them legally adopted (and no doubt trousered the government bounty for doing so). The Websters fought a long battle to prove they had not harmed their children. Last year, experts agreed that leg injuries suffered by one youngster were due not to physical abuse but to a disorder that stopped him eating anything other than soya milk.
We have written at length about this appalling case. The Websters will be in the High Court in the New Year, trying to get the adoptions reversed, but to be honest it doesn't seem terribly likely.
Now we learn of a new, ludicrous and rather unpleasant twist to the Websters' story. It turns out that Lisa Christensen, head of Norfolk Children's Services and therefore the Websters' chief persecutor, is married to a convicted terrorist with a history of drink and drug abuse.
She is the wife of Jack Prescott, who was given a 15-year prison sentence for involvement in a bomb attack on the home of a Tory Cabinet Minister. Prescott, a self-confessed former heroin addict and thief, was a founder member of the Angry Brigade, Britain's only home-grown urban terrorist group, which carried out 25 attacks on Government buildings, embassies and corporations. His past has come to light because he was recently convicted of assaulting Ms.Christensen.
She failed to tell Norfolk County Council about her husband's violent past when she was appointed head of Social Services in 2002. Two years later, she became the authority's £120,000-a-year director of children's services with responsibility for schools, child protection and young people in care. In that role, she approved the forced removal of Mark and Nicky Webster's three children, all then under five - a decision condemned by Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb as 'an appalling miscarriage of justice'.
Mr Prescott's past was revealed last week when he made a series of drunken phone calls to his wife's office, following a court case in which he admitted assaulting her during a row at the family home. In one call, he told Ms. Christensen's secretary that he had computer memory sticks and confidential files relating to scandals about children in care in the county. A police investigation concluded that he held no such information.
The couple, who married in 1992, claim to be separated, but they are listed at the same address on the electoral roll, and neighbours in Mattishall said they were living together just a few weeks ago.
Prescott was considered highly dangerous as a result of his terrorist exploits and when he was sentenced at the Old Bailey in 1971 the judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, said he had been convicted of complicity 'in the most evil conspiracy I have ever had to deal with'. At the time of his arrest over the bomb plot, Prescott was on parole from prison, where he had been serving five years for firearms offences. Then 27, he already had convictions for theft, housebreaking and assault but his sentence on the terrorism charges was later cut from 15 years to ten by the Court of Appeal.
He told the jury at his trial "I was taking eight grains of heroin and other drugs every day and I sold all my personal possessions to buy drugs."
Lisa Christensen is said to be embarrassed and upset by the incident. Aah, poor thing. I'm sure we all feel just as sympathetic as she was towards the Websters.
And it is of course to her credit that she now feels obliged to tell county hall chiefs about her husband's criminal record. Norfolk County Council chief executive David White carried out a rank-closing exercise, saying "Lisa Christensen was still a schoolgirl when the man who later became her husband was arrested in 1971 and the couple didn't meet until long after he had served his sentence. We rightly require job candidates to supply information about any criminal convictions they may hold but that does not apply to their partners and Lisa did not share that information with us when she was appointed, probably because it is something that happened more than 35 years ago. I am sad for her and her family that Jack's personal demons should now be a source of such trauma."
Well, David White, you can buddy up to this vicious harridan as much as you like, but we would have thought it was very much in the public interest that she should have disclosed this before you appointed her. The arrest may have been in 1971, but the man's criminal activities haven't ceased, have they? He's still a dangerous drunk who can't keep his hands to himself, he's still capable of acting erratically around highly confidential and sensitive child-protection information. Hardly the kind of person to keep quiet about, surely?
Let's face it, we don't remember anyone in the County Council offering the same level of understanding to Mark and Nicky Webster when they were being branded child-molesters? Did anyone at County Hall say "Well, so what if they hurt their child, it was a long time ago now, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt"?
No, we didn't think so.
The GOS says: It was announced recently that Jack Straw was lifting some of the reporting restrictions whereby the Family Courts have been able to carry on persecuting innocent families in secret, and ensuring their own immunity to public scrutiny with freely-applied court orders banning the victims or the press from discussing their plight.
Unfortunately we don't think this move is going to do any good, because it's hedged around with provisos - for instance, a Family Court judge can still gag the press if he thinks the circumstances warrant it, so it'll probably be a case of "plus ça change mais plus c'est la même chose".
No, what we really need is a few wacky doctors facing suits for defamation, and the conviction of half a dozen social workers for kidnap and wrongful imprisonment. These people have been eager enough to invoke the law whenever they saw an opportunity, so let's apply the same principle to them. Bastards.
If you've got a few minutes to spare, have a look at this story, and follow some of the links at the bottom. That'll liven up your Christmas.
Not.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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